


After Following a Song Down Into a Pit, I Now Have Adventures As The Minion of a Rabbit-Eared Scoundrel, Peko

by Naeddyr



Category: Hololive
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, Hololive inspired worldbuilding, Hololive members as Gods, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:29:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29738064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naeddyr/pseuds/Naeddyr
Summary: After awakening in a new body and receiving a new name, Heri Guardian is stuck with the Wild Hare Adventure Company in the dangerous Demonic Realm, where the ancient undead enemies of the Gods of the Holotheon seem to find his presence especially vexing. Can he make it out of Nedhrigard and to the safety civilization, or will Captain Pekorin's insane hubris bring doom on everyone?
Comments: 5
Kudos: 3





	1. Start and Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story that is at this point almost marginally a fanfic. It is an isekai portal fantasy inspired by Hololive and uses the members of Hololive as world building material in the form of gods. But it's too late to stop now. Please enjoy.

I woke from a falling dream that ended with a seized heart-beat; though instead of tangled and damp bed sheets, my spasms of movement spread clouds of dust that filled the box I was in, and the fall that brought me there had been going on for months. 

Hacking coughs and the inability to breathe didn’t help when I tried to push up against the lid of the heavy coffin. I realized I was wearing metal gauntlets as the smooth marble slipped under my touch. My body was encased in hard plate armor. 

Panic for air gave me strength where I lost in coordination, and the cursed thing moved up. I pushed towards the side and – thankfully – the lid settled out of joint, leaving a small finger-gap. That let me grip properly and dislodge it completely, and the lid crashed down to the stone floor with a bang. 

I scrambled to hang over the side of the coffin and catch some air. I was unable to spit out the thick black snot of dust that had invaded my lungs; my body felt wrung dry and dehydrated in a dangerous way. The pains of hunger were only secondary at that point. 

“Something is crawling out of the _god-peko_ tomb, Mallow!” someone screeched in a high-pitched voice and when I raised my head I saw a fight scene from a fantasy movie. 

In a mausoleum filled with pillars and worn-out time, a party of the living was fighting shadowy undead apparitions and revenant creatures. Their weapons flashed with lights and color where they struck, and magic spells flashed with sinusoidal rhythms to protect and destroy. The adventurers had picked a large and high-raised dais in the middle of the big room as their defensive perimeter, where a certain stone coffin had just opened and let out whatever creature lurked within, which at the time happened to be me. 

“I knew this was a bad idea! I knew this was a bad idea!” an old pink-robed wizard shouted even as he hurriedly continued drawing a glowing line in the complicated magic circle that surrounded the coffin, two red wooden kegs, and me. 

“It was _your_ idea!” the owner of the high-pitched voice replied, grunted and slashed a dust-corpse with a streak of sharp light as it tried to hoist itself up onto the dais. 

Before I could react, that same bunny-eared adventurer turned in the same singular motion and sprung towards me from the falling ashes that scattered from the specter, all too ready to strike with two short curved blades. I flinched and closed my eyes fully believing I would be immediately returning to Her Terrible Majesty’s court. 

“What the peko?!” I heard from before me and opened my eyes. I had been spared by a hair on both sides of my neck. The short-haired brunette rabbit adventurer took a step backwards in confusion, and then gleeful joy bloomed on her face. “A tomb guardian! An uncorrupted tomb guardian! Ah ha ha!” she see-saw laughed like a maniac towards the pink wizard, who started laughing too without stopping drawing the circle. 

“Pekorin!” another adventurer at the ledge frantically poked a spear at something out of sight below. They were an adorable yellow-furred little piglet humanoid in scale armor. 

“Yeah-yeah-yeah, Chaco, calm your pekos!” Pekorin answered. She turned to me and spoke slowly. “Dost. Thou. Uh. Versteht. Moi?” 

I nodded uncertainly, and she beamed. “Good pekking enough!” she said and grabbed me by the neck and dragged me out onto the pebble-filled floor with a crash of metal. 

“That hurt, that hurt,” I coughed out at the ceiling as I lied there, but she ignored me as she rummaged in the coffin, throwing out bits of armor, including a helmet with a big crack that she eventually discarded. I just stared at her, the battle punctuated by a couple of falling foes and flashes behind me, until she found what she was searching for with an enthusiastic exclamation of maniacal awe: a blue metal spear with a long and wide blade that had been wrapped in a cloth. 

She took out an ampule of glowing orange liquid and broke its neck to pour the contents over the spear’s head, where it was absorbed into the surface as colourfully growing ornamental streaks that ran on the surface. I felt a strange tugging in my breast. 

“What are you doing?” I rasped out as I tried to get up again onto my side. It seemed like I had spent all my strength somehow. 

“Isn’t it obvious?” the rabbit-eared woman threw the bottle away and shoved the spear in my hands. “Now let’s hurry the peko up!” she shouted at the pink wizard, who nodded enthusiastically and pulled out a small notebook that he started to chant from. The glowing circle on the floor responded to it with a soft buzzing. 

As I grasped the spear I felt warmth return to my body. The thirst and hunger I felt abated to a dull background pain as strength returned to me. Among the many things that had happened up till then, discovering that I did not inhabit my former body anymore wasn’t exactly surprising anymore. 

I crawled to my knees and used the spear as a crutch to pull myself up and the joints in my body crackled. As I rose up to my new body’s full length, I looked down at the rabbit-eared woman. It seemed that I had gained a couple of feet in height. 

I felt dizzy. 

The rabbit-eared woman pulled my arm and led me out of the magic circle to the edge of the dais, where the other adventures stood in guard, and pointed out below into the shifting shadows where a crowd (possibly a _blend_ ) of ghostly figures rippled and floated warily. 

“See that big peko over there?” she pointed towards something in the back and pulled my face in that direction when I first didn’t react. “That’s the _corrupted_ guardian of this place, doesn’t it peko you right off?” 

A shadow-clad dark knight with glowing red eyes burning inside its helmet was now walking forward with ominous purpose. Its armor was similar to mine. 

“Huh?” I said. 

“Good luck!” the rabbit woman said, jumped behind me, and kicked me off the ledge down out of the light of the lanterns into the darkness. 

Apparently that was what finally made me snap out of the catastrofunk I’d been in. Every particle of my body and soul was screaming that things – as they stood – were going to ‘get real’ and they were going get real ‘real fast’; and yes, even though my _logical_ _mind_ had some reservations it would just have to shut up, take a raincheck and return to the matter at a more convenient date. Like when I wasn’t stumbling down towards a field of ghosts armed only with a spear and the unearned confidence of an opportunistic rabbit. 

I hit the tiles of the floor with my face, my accompaniment a disappointing crash of flesh-muffled metal plates, and the hall fell into silence. 

“Ow, ow,” I croaked and scrambled onto my knees. As I turned to look around me, I found a crowd of skeptical faces looking down at me – both living and dead. 

Then I started running with the strength that holding the glowing spear afforded me, and the corrupted dead howled after me. 

“Where the peko are you going?!” I could hear echo from behind me as I turned a corner into a dark hallway. 

How would I know?! 

My eyes quickly adjusted for the low light in the stone-clad passage I ran into, though no windows let any light in. The air was dry and dusty, and my lungs already burned with pain. The corridors smelled of some burnt chemical that shouldn’t burn, and to my regret there were no signs of passage in the dust on the floor. The body I habited was constantly being pulled back from the verge of collapsing with magic, yet I had to run. 

The ghosts nipped at my heels, their grave-cold caresses connecting with me or the floor and walls around me. Dust swirled as invisible swipes marked the surfaces with cold claw marks that faded away quickly. Thankfully they were not deep enough to stop me in my haste when they touched me. The ghosts were weak, but numerous, and their collective whispering coalesced into a chilling avant garde composition by someone born in Transylvania. 

And why was this place a maze?! What purpose did that serve? There were tens of twisty paths that crossed each other, leading to nowhere, and their only noticeable differences lay in the carvings on the wall that flew by unseen in the murk. 

I slipped and hit the wall with a crash. The phantoms were over me and I could feel cold enveloping my fingers and limbs. 

“Get off me!” I swung my spear and one of them struck at my heart. 

My breath stopped cold for a moment, like I’d fallen into a cold winter’s day. The ghost pushed deeper… and then disappeared in a split second. It appeared as if something had grabbed the glittering silk rag soul within the half-dust shell that defined its meager form and yanked it through me leaving only falling ashes behind. 

As the other ghost pulled back in agitation and howling I got back on my feet and continued running. 

I was starting to flag when I felt a difference in the air and stumbled upon signs of others passing. It must have been where the adventurers had entered the building, so I followed it, hoping it would lead outside and somewhere safe. Ghosts and spirits were bound to a location, right? 

I was quite mistaken, I realized as I ran past the doorway of the mausoleum tower. It didn’t matter if they were bound to a location if the _location_ they were bound to was the whole damn world outside. 

I was in some sort of hell-dimension. 

The night sky was dark red. A malevolent, black moon made a hole in the firmament. The ground was dark and the pale life that was there was sickly and withered. The only thing that didn’t fit was the roaring river of lively water going past and down a waterfall into a black lake stretching on the plains lying below. 

And I was stuck in the middle of the raging torrent, on a small island full of ghosts. 

The short moment I had stood there meant the following ghosts caught up with me, and soon I felt cold again. I stumbled forwards and waved my spear in a glowing orange arc, which caused the spectres to chorus in anger, but they still continued to pester me. Soon the corporeal ones would arrive – I could hear the click-clack sounds of their movement – so the dust-ghosts harassed me towards a precipice that jutted over the fall. 

“Let me go…” I croaked, my throat uncooperative and voice gone, thirst making itself known with painful throbs every moment that I tried to speak. “Let me go…” 

Suddenly, the attack abated. I raised myself from my crouch, and looked behind me. 

The corrupted armored thing was there, looking at me with red eyes, surrounded by a halo of ashes and its undead host. 

“ _Brother_ …” it whispered eerily, “ _rise against… the accursed gods… with us…_ ” 

How do you even reply to that sort of thing? I reflexively took a step backwards and looked down towards the churning lake beneath. The fall was cartoonishly high, and no way was I going to drop voluntarily into a boiling current like that. 

“ _Thou art…_ ” it paused, though it didn’t even need to breathe, “ _still blinded… by… the hateful gods._ ” 

“Wai–” I started but was ignored. 

“ _So… be it…_ ” the host around the armored figure started flowing into a maelstrom of wind and shadow, centered and pulled into them, the incorporeal and corporeal alike, with the sound of a thousand pieces of old leather wrung to their breaking point. I stupidly stared at the creature being built in front of me, bits and pieces of bone and mummified flesh fusing together into a goddamn a classic goddamn boss monster. 

I looked behind me down into the water. What about now? No, definitely not. 

The monster blocking my way finished its transformation. 

It was a huge centaurian creature. It had six legs and was covered in sparse patches of black armor. It’s tail was more like a whip than anything else, and the human torso in the front half was quite small in comparison with the rest of the body, except for the big claws. The material it was made out of wasn’t as boney or rotten as you would expect from the mixture of leftover undead corpses; it was more like pale and sickly jerky than anything. 

“ _Join us and die,_ ” it whispered and struck at me with its claw. 

“What the peko are you standing around for?!” Pekorin screeched and appeared between us from nowhere, redirecting the strike with her twin daggers. “Get your peko in gear! Pokey pokey stick!” 

I fumbled with the spear and the monster kicked me with its foreleg, sending me sprawling to the ground. 

“What are you doing?!” Pekorin screamed at me, which was completely understandable in the circumstances we were in and I’ve forgiven her. “Get up and fight!” she dodged beneath the monster’s legs as it swiped at her and jumped up on its back. Then she did a kickflip down to the ground from the monster’s back and helped me on my knees, while the monster writhed as it reached for one of her currently burning daggers stuck in the back of its human torso. 

As I scrambled up again and leaned on her, I hacked out a raspy answer. “I don’t know…” I coughed. 

“Take a deep breath, we’re going to get through this together,” Pekorin said as we maneuvered away from the monster. 

“I don’t know... how to fight.” 

Pekorin was silent for a moment, then turned her lifeless eyes towards me. 

“I am very angry with you right now.” 

“Fireeee!” someone shouted from the direction of the tomb and the discharge of a cannon and extremely meaty-sounding arrow thuds rocked the monster’s flank with enough force to make it drag its claws in the dirt beneath it. 

“Good job!” Pekorin screamed, and took the opportunity to jump and run on the monster again. 

“Hang in there, captain!” came the reply. 

In the archway to the tomb some of Pekorin’s companions had gathered and were now preparing for another volley, especially the man who had replied: he was thick with muscle and wore a blue twin-braided beard, but more importantly held a small cannon that was on the end of a sturdy pole, with its end dug into a short but violent groove in the earth where it had been braced for the previous shot. To his side stood three well-armored archers holding ridiculously tall black bows. 

The short yellow-furred humanoid pig, Chaco, stood in front of them, fending off the lesser spectres and corpses that had not merged with the corrupted guardian. The spear she held poked and prodded everywhere and everything, the sturdy crosspiece wings on the shaft beneath the head pushing and stopping the attacking creatures from moving too close with barely visible magical force. 

While I had briefly looked away from the corrupted guardian it decided to attack, and Pekorin had to scream at me to get my attention. 

“The water! The water will purify!” she instructed. 

Easier screamed than done. I was still holding onto the spear I had been handed, despite everything, but I doubted it would help if I couldn’t use it. But then again, spears used to be the weapon of choice for armies everywhere for a reason. 

I lowered myself into what I really hoped was a stance of some sort. Legs apart, center of gravity… low? Grasp the spear with both fists, point the dangerous end away from myself, look for openings in oh shit it’s coming for me. 

The corrupted guardian had apparently expected me to dodge _away_ from the ledge instead of towards it, so when its giant mass wasn’t able to stop the swing in the wrong direction it left its flank open. It scrambled with its back legs to avoid me. 

So, weirdly enough, it seemed like it still thought I was the biggest threat around. Presented with the opportunity, I was able to get an orange-glow stab in (thank you, mysterious ampule of magical liquid) between the ribs… or the several rib _cages_ that had been merged together. It roared in anger, but I couldn’t tell whether it felt pain. It swiped at me defensively yet again. 

Yes, that’s right, concentrate on me as the adventurers are… taking… aim! 

The air rang with the cannon’s roar and the twang of the gigantic bows that hit the monster in its backside with ferocious force, punching it forwards the ledge, and me. Between the choice of falling down into the water and rolling through between its legs, my stupid brain picked the latter. 

The monster, following long-useless instincts of the living, reared and jumped away from me, slipping over the ledge, only holding with the claws of its two front left legs. I looked up at it as I lied on the ground where I had rolled, and there was a second of silence. 

“Get the peko outta here!” I heard Pekorin shout and she flew feet first into the monster’s side and bounced into the air. 

Scene, extreme slow motion, slow pan over the following: instead of the monster letting go of its grip, there was an ominous crack and the earth shifted under my lower thigh. I imagined I saw a moment of sublime incredulity in its helmeted face, and then half a second later the stone shifted and slid away with a jerk, taking the boss monster with it. 

Pekorin shouted out a jubilant, mad cry somewhere in the air above me, and as the body of the corpse-amalgamation dropped out of view I lifted my gaze and saw a mad, toothy laugh on her mad face. 

Except the creature’s tail whipped out, caught her by the leg and changed her trajectory just enough to make her miss. 

Fortunately I was there! That is, fortunately I was there, safely clinging to the dirt, _almost_ _none_ of my bits dangling dangerously over the abyss, every part of me safe and sound, away from certain death. 

So on the way down she desperately clawed through the air, grabbed my foot and pulled me down with her towards the water. 

We both screamed until the water hit us. 

* * *

Somehow I was still able to not drown myself in the disorientating bubbly currents and I hit the side of a few rocks that pointed me upwards, where I finally found air. 

“Aaah…” I couldn’t yet scream, though I tried. It was completely dark, and even though the water churned a bit around me, the sound of the waterfall itself was muted. I was in a cave somewhere. 

Clinging onto the side of a rock wasn’t going to get me anywhere long term, and as I looked around I could see blobs of weak light to one side. Hoping it was a way out of the cave, I started swimming towards it until something breached the water in the darkness and started sputtering and thrashing for air. 

Despite my misgivings, I swam towards the drowning rabbit menace. When my feet hit the bottom of the pool on the way, I stood up exhausted and waded the rest of the way to where she was making a racket. 

“Guardian!” she gulped out an echoing cry as she tried desperately to hold her head above water. “Help..!” 

“Your feet... should reach the bottom... you maniac,” I told her. My voice was still like sand poured into a saucepan. 

A moment of silence. 

“Oh look, there’s light, let’s go towards it,” Pekorin said after a moment. The silhouette of her head was just above water and she started moving towards it extremely slowly. She must have been on her tippy-toes. 

I stopped her. “Is the water... drinkable?” My throat was so dry. I was dying. 

Pekorin continued her slow progress. “Oh sure, the water’s almost the only thing you can trust in this peko place.” 

That was good enough for me. I immediately splashed my face into the water and drank deep. 

The sensation of drinking water after what must have been hundreds of years in a stone coffin was indescribable. It didn’t make any biological sense that… _my_ … body had survived, that it wasn’t just a stick of crusty leather. Neither did the very strange, very _metaphysical_ sensation of drinking make any sense, or the volume of water I took in in just a few moments. It was physiologically improbable. 

I had to get up to cough when some of it got into my windpipe and lungs, somehow hacking out huge gobs of gelatinous phlegm at the same time, and the opening up of my breath felt like someone unblocked the air intake of a furnace. 

It was amazing. I started to feel alive, a better kind of alive than what the magic had lent me. One piece of life force in place, though the rest of my existence was still scaffolded by outside power. 

“Sweet water, wonderful water,” I mumbled to myself. My voice was still hoarse, and probably would be for a while. 

“There’s time for prayer later!” Pekorin said. She had been able to advance a few hard-fought yards in the time I had sated myself. I sighed, and when I caught up with her I crouched down and picked her up like a kid. 

Besides the drooping ears and barely visible grumpy face the drenched rabbit woman did not say anything. 

We waded through the cave, guided by the dim illumination to a bend. It led into a large cavern that was lit up by the soft eerie glow of a pale lavender statue standing thigh-deep in water, in the center of what was obviously a shrine. 

“It’s a shrine!” Pekorin exclaimed and jumped down into the shallow pool. 

Small streams of fresh water from the river above had been piped to this room, and they fell in symmetrical paths down the sides. A shower of droplets fell upon the statue itself, slowly smoothing out its features with age. The statue was looking away from us towards an entrance and a staircase beyond that led upwards, towards the mausoleum above. 

Pekorin splish-splashed with long strides in the direction of the statue to get a better look. As I took a step inside, the light in the room strengthened and a gentle buzz rippled over the water. 

Pekorin looked at me with a sideways glance. “It’s reacting to the guardian,” she muttered quietly enough I thought it was not meant for me, and a grinning gleam entered her eyes. “What shrine is this, anyhow?” she remembered the statue and finished her waddle. 

She peered at the face. “The features are gone, but this is probably a shrine for… well, just in case it belongs to some other god let’s not mention names, but most probably the River God.” 

“You think?” I grumbled. “Is this place safe?” 

“An unattended shrine for the gods, hidden in the Demonic Realm underneath a tomb whose ages-damned denizens we’ve just stirred up? If we hadn’t dumped that big nâtaur into the river, this place would definitely be its target number one if it ever found out.” 

“So you’re saying this is not a safe place, got it,” I picked myself up and continued wading towards the back where the stairs were. The pool was soon only ankle-deep. 

“Lighten up, you big peko–” was what Pekorin was able to get out before I was alerted by her yelping and a splash as she flew back into the deeper waters. 

I wasn’t able to turn in time as someone grabbed my throat and hit me with a tackle, bringing me down with a splash. I was caught under the corrupted guardian, humanoid again, but shaking and scalded with whifts of smoky vapor dancing violently out of its fleshy bits and from the joints and edges of its armor. 

“ _Shrine… a shrine! It must be destroyed, thou wilt join us, thou must join us, through thee…_ ” it horror-mumbled through its helmet as it held me down and strangled me. 

I couldn’t speak or reply. It held my throat above the armor and pushed my jaws shut with superhuman force. Not that it would have needed much strength for that. I do not know whether it was the strangulation, but in my eyesight the waters around us blackened and the light dimmed while the colors around us fluttered with color and agitation. It had been an eventful day, and my reserves of terror were running low, leaving only the numbness of a well-worn nightmare. 

I wrested my arm from under the corrupted guardians knee and swung at its head, which it ignored. I pulled at its helmet, and it ignored that too, too concentrated on my fate to care about something like that. 

When the helmet splashed down, I was greeted by an ordinary, though very gaunt face. The only thing that was strange about it was the burning flame in its eyes and the expression of supreme hatred it wore. 

Then again, that hatred was so human. A deep well of obsession that only _people_ could draw from. 

I gripped that hateful face and tried to push it away. 

“ _‘Tis time, brother,_ ” it whispered as my strength flagged and the darkness around us deepened. The fingers around my throat pulsed with the puss of human emotion and the psychopathic humors of the deep, dark parts of the soul. My ‘fellow guardian’ exposed its disgusting heart to me, imploring me. _Feel the way I do, hurt the way I do, hate the way I do_. 

But I am not your brother, you pitiful thing. It came too close. 

_What is this, who are you?_ the soul whispered, finally seeing me. _What have they done to my brother?!_

A spirit mantle touched another, and could not hold. It unravelled and passed through me to another world, leaving only the animated husk of a former being. 

But the fingers still held in their death-grip and it would have been the end for me if Pekorin hadn’t finally showed up and cut the arms off. 

* * *

“How the peko are you so heavy, did they bury you in that coffin with a pantry?” Pekorin complained as she supported me up the spiral stairs towards the surface. I had to bend down, which didn’t help. Small dimly glowing gems in the stairs and walls showed where to step. 

I didn’t answer and couldn’t answer. The fight with the guardian had left me exhausted on a deep level that I didn’t even understand, and it took a lot of effort to just put a foot in front of another–-not to mention the nigh insurmountable effort involved in raising it up a stair at a time. We moved forward only through heroic effort by myself, but fortunately I felt my strength returning again quite quickly. 

“Oh for peko’s sake, how long are these pekking stairs?” she complained. In retrospect the fall down the waterfall hadn’t been higher than half a dozen stories, but that was still plenty to climb after all of the stuff we’d gone through. 

So climb we did, grumbling all the way around and around. After what felt like an eternity, Pekorin quieted down. 

“Ya still there?” she asked. 

I nodded. “I feel… a bit better.” Bit by bit. “... God, my voice is still so hoarse…” 

Pekorin cackled. “Oh, that’s not how you sound normally?” 

I cleared my throat. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t know anything about this world,” I whispered. I did not cry. 

Pekorin was quiet for a moment. “Well that’s some heavy peko right there, buddy. But don’t worry,” she tightened her grip on my shoulder and turned to me with a confident face, “just hang in there, and we’ll get you wherever you belong… which, let’s face it, is probably back in your comfy box.” 

I closed my eyes. Is this how it was going to be, universe? 

“Has _anyone_ told you you’re not half as funny as you think you are?” 

The damned rabbit-ear cackled. 

* * *

The stairs finally took us to a new room. Dead cobwebs remained of ancient spiders, long gone, and the surfaces were covered in geometric patterns that reeked of magic sigils. Pekora had stuffed the cage of an ancient metal torch with stuff that had been lying around. I had no idea how it hadn’t burned out in a plume of flame yet, everything was so dessicated. 

“More ancient layers of protection against nekrothrals,” Pekorin explained to me. “Pockets of these kinds of places are all over the Demonic Realm where people clustered during the end.” 

“So I am in Hell,” I muttered. 

“Ha, you’re not rich enough for _that_ place yet!” Pekorin slapped the side of my armor, “I’ll save you a seat in the first class carriage, though, if this trip goes well.” She pushed a piece of dried-out wood with her foot. “So keep an eye out for good stuff.” 

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I clawed myself out of a sarcophagus in _this very mausoleum_ ,” I exasperaculated, “don’t just automatically assume I’m going to help you loot it!” 

“Sheesh, stingy,” she rolled her eyes at me. 

We came to a set of ceremonial doors, which seemed to be the main entrance on the way down to the shrine. They also didn’t want to budge. 

“Hold my torch,” Pekorin handed it to me and took a few steps backwards. She stood for a moment, breathed in deep and let it out slowly, then took a running stance, jumped forward with a brief flash of that magicky light and drop-kicked one of the doors open with a noisy bang and a backwards flip onto the ground. 

“What’s up, motherpekos?! Did’ya miss me?!” she strutted out into… A very empty hall with no one inside. 

“Shut the peko up,” Pekorin didn’t look at me as I bent down, laughing out the last of my vocal cords. 

Happily for Pekorin we quickly heard shouting and people running in the echoing hallways around the chamber, and Chaco the yellow hog human and a group of others soon came into view. 

“Pekorin!” Chaco shouted and ran up to Pekorin, who strode forward with her arms open wide like she owned the place. Chaco ran into Pekorin’s embrace and started sobbing on Pekorin’s shoulder, snot running out of her snout onto Pekorin’s back, who patted her with soothing noises. 

“I quit,” Chaco sniffled. 

“What?! But we’re getting so close!” Pekorin grabbed Chaco by the shoulders and shook her. 

“I quit! My poor heart can’t take this anymore!” Chaco threw her hands in the air and turned away from Pekorin, who followed her as they argued their way out of the hall. 

I was left alone to shuffle awkwardly with the three human adventurers who had accompanied Chaco. 

“The Captain has, ah, left us to guide you, Guardian,” a man in a simple cuirass, wearing a tired-looking five o’clock shadow and with short brown hair rubbed his eyebrow with the hand that didn’t hold a lantern. “Please follow us to the camp.” To the others he said: “Standard formation? By Alfrû’s mighty host of husbands…” 

“Ah, yes,” I croaked out. 

It didn’t take long for us to pass through a few passageways to arrive at a camp being built inside what looked like an ancient storage room. I probably did not want to know what was in the jars lining the walls. 

What held my eye was that someone had a pot standing on some kind of runic stove top. Pekorin was standing next to it, talking at Chaco, who was ladling herself a grumpy bowl of stew and ignoring Pekorin. 

When Pekorin noticed me she yelled and gestured to me to get closer. “Hey, Guardian, come get some st–” 

She squawked as I assaulted the cooking area, almost scattering a stack of bowls in my haste and rattling the spoons with my slippery gauntlets before untying the things and throwing them to the ground. Chaco was quick enough to hand me the ladle before I wrested it from her, and my hunger, let loose and wild, peaked into a hoarse whine as I filled the damn bowl, faster, faster, and finally took a spoonful of the heavenly meal. 

After a few bowls I was in a food coma lying down on the floor, and slept. 

### Prologue

_In a feverish trance I heard the ridiculous singing. It was a faintly nostalgic patter that followed me as I walked under the streetlights; an enticing sound, full of joy and fun and the distortion of old memories, delivered at a quick pace and made out of gibberish. Not at all like the present, when the world seemed to veer deeper into the inevitable abyss of the future. Underneath my mask I tried to cough along._

_I turned a corner and the brightness of a white cat – no, fox – hurt me. The singing was so close I could almost understand it._

_“It is so beautiful,” I muttered to myself, as was customary at the time. The white fox looked at me and then sprinted up a stone staircase between red pillars._

_I knew I had to follow and stepped up into the darkness. It started snowing._

_To the sides, pale blue flames dotted the trees, but did not illuminate. I walked upwards slowly and inevitably one step at a time, higher towards the peak and deeper into the blizzard, but when I came there it was so dark that I could not see the city around me, only the night sky and the blue snow. The only thing with me was the song._

_I knew I could almost understand it. It was at the tip of my tongue. The nonsense would give way to meaning, gibberish would become speaking, the world would align to reality and all would be well again._

_The final stair step I took upwards was a false one, and my stomach clenched at the drop which never ended. The snow broke before me and I fell down the rabbit hole, and the cosmic stuttersong stayed behind. Even as it faded with its purpose spent, I understood at last, and looked up to see the fox watch me with satisfaction and leave me to my falling._

_Dubidubidub palapalappoom._

* * *

_The white phantom, clad in a dark blue robe with turquoise highlights, looked at my file and shook his head. “I’m afraid without the proper paperwork I can’t yet release you from quarantine back into the material planes, even if you don’t have any marks of nekrothralic contagion. But don’t worry, you will love it here in the domain of Her Terrible Majesty; she is very cute and terrifying.”_

_Someone knocked on the door of the office and another phantom, long-eared and clad in shadows, walked in and up to the immigration officer and whispered something, both of them stealing glances at me. I saw a bottle of glowing golden liquid change hands, and the unknown phantom left._

_“Ah, where were we?” said the officer after putting the bottle in the bottom right sliding drawer of its desk. “Oh yes, your reincarnation! Bye, have a good life!”_

_The floor disappeared under me and I continued downwards._


	2. Exposition like Mom used to make

Even after she poured about a cup of water on my face, it took half a minute for anything to actually register; although apparently my unconscious body somehow had grabbed the canteen and drunk the rest of it. 

“Come along and meet my officers,” Pekorin said, “and maybe you can tell us all about the secrets and hidden treasures in this forsaken peko-tomb.” 

There was a party going on, not loud or raucous but joyful all the same. In the moody light of the lanterns and the few rays of twilight shooting in through small windows the wine was flowing. The room was joined together by the music of a few players who fumbled through a renfaire tune as onlookers around them sang along. Among the feasters I saw signs of wounds and bandages, but regardless of them everyone seemed to be in high spirits. 

“Good morning to you too,” I said, still with a half-dead voice, and felt all of the centuries my new body had been laden with as I rose up from the floor. Someone had moved the stove away. 

I was still wearing the armor and got the horrible image of years of bed sores merging my flesh with the metal. I did a quick check to confirm I was wearing clothing underneath. Thankfully, nothing chafed or was numb in a particularly disconcerting way. 

We didn’t stay in the party room, and Pekorin led me through a corridor into a smaller back room without windows. A few lanterns illuminated an intact wooden table where Pekorin seated herself at the end, flanked by the more memorable personalities I had seen previously and who now laughed and talked with each other. I walked up to the other end and sat down in the empty seat there, opposite of the deranged rabbit-eared brunette who was now looking at me ominously from behind her intertwined fingers. Even seated, I was still a head taller than anyone else at the table. 

Of course, whatever effect this meeting was meant to convey was a little bit weakened when I could see the empty bottle on the table and that everyone there seemed to be at least mildly buzzed. Chaco the boar handed me a ceramic cup and poured some for me too. “Have some victory wine!” 

“Thank you,” I took a sip. Yup, that was wine alright. 

“Introductions!” Pekorin suddenly shouted, as if she remembered that they were a thing and to silence the talking. “I am Pekorin Leveret, captain of the Wild Hare Company of Ys-Tartessa!” She poured a little wine in her cup, raised it and drank it all down with one gulp. “These are my lieutenants.” 

She pointed first at the muscled cannoneer with the blue hair and twin-braided beard who had shot at the necro-centaur _thing_. “Sarc Cascabel!” 

“How’d ye do, m’lord,” the man tipped a hat that wasn’t there and then finished his cup. 

“Tyrian Mallow!” she pointed at the old pink-robed wizard who had drawn the magic circle around my stone casket. 

“Charmed,” he stood up and made an exaggerated bow with a gleam of curiosity in his eyes, then finished his cup. 

“Bori Earp!” this time it was the nondescript, stressed-out man who had led me to the camp. 

“Nice to meet you,” he said and finished his cup. 

“And most importantly!” Pekorin stood up and walked behind Chaco, “My best friend in the world, the completely irreplaceable, _incalculably valuable_ , **supremely talented** right-hand gal, Chaco Javelin of Ys-Tartessa!” 

Chaco gave her a long-suffering look and then smiled at me. “Please don’t mind Pekorin, she’s always like this. It is a pleasure to meet you, Guardian.” She finished her cup. 

“And now to the question...” Pekorin strode to stand by her chair, looked out of the circle of seats with her back to me and dramatically turned to face me with a gesture. “Who are you?” 

The others straightened themselves, and I felt myself doing it too. 

“My name is…” I started then a thought occurred to me. “Wait,” I cleared my throat out of reflex. As if that would help with my voice. 

“What?” Pekorin asked. 

“Uh,” this was going to be a weird question, “are true magical names a thing in this universe?” 

Pekorin looked at Mallow, the old wizard. “Well, no? Not usually?” he said. 

“But how can he know we wouldn’t be lying about it?” Pekorin countered. 

“What?” said I and “What?” said Mallow. 

“I mean, if true names were a thing,” she explained as she poured more wine for herself, “how could you be sure we wouldn’t just lie to you so you’d give us your true name?” She emphasized her point by waving the bottle. 

“Oh!” Sarc Cascabel slammed his fist into his palm cheerfully. “That makes sense!” 

Chaco burrowed her face in her hands. Bori Earp, the boring guy, just stared at a lantern with a long-suffering look. 

“If he can’t trust us with that kind of thing,” the wizard explained, “then what can he trust? It wouldn’t even have to be some kind of true name thing, it could be birth runes or the stretching shadow of his past or a whatever ritual.” 

“Quiet about the irth-bay unes-ray,” Pekorin joked(?) with an exaggerated whisper. 

“Enough, birth runes aren’t even a thing,” Chaco said and tapped the table. 

“Actually,” Mallow said, “it’s a pretty wide-spread methodology of power in the north, especially End.” 

“So as long as he doesn’t tell us his birth rune he should be alright?” Sarc cheerfully remarked. 

“Technically he shouldn’t tell us anything now,” Earp was now staring at his cup. 

Pekorin looked thoughtful. “I guess that’s true.” She knocked the table twice. “Meeting adjourned!” 

I took a sip of my wine as Chaco slipped behind Pekorin and caught her in a choke hold. 

“Alright, alright, peko,” Pekorin coughed out and tapped on the table. “So, what’s your deal, Guardian?” 

I took a gravelly breath. “I’m a soul reincarnated into someone else’s body?” I ventured. “A human soul. Not a possessive spirit or anything like that.” My autotranslator didn’t want to say “demon” at that point. 

Everyone looked at me. Then Pekorin nodded thoughtfully with her arms crossed. “Makes sense.” 

She slapped the table harder this time before Chaco relented and let go. “I mean it does! You guys must have noticed! He can’t even fight, what kind of guardian doesn’t know how to fight?” 

Mallow hummed and spoke. “If a soul was to slip past the usual… afterlife procedures and take over a body, then a perfectly preserved guardian really makes the most sense. In a way, that body is still alive, even if the original soul is gone.” 

“How do you know the original soul is gone?” I asked, suddenly a bit worried. 

“We’ve seen it before,” Pekorin interjected. “Even on the way here there was a small barrow mound on the river. I had Mallow check it if it was still... active.” 

“It was the same kind of thing that we found here,” Mallow nodded, “a guardian set in a deep, cold sleep, awaiting for a call to action that will never come. Eventually the soul lets go and disappears, leaving a husk behind that might or might not die and dry away, or it becomes nekrothralically corrupted and that’s how you get all those damn corrupted guardians.” 

“When we checked out the rest of this temple we found another hall with a coffin like yours,” Chaco nodded at me. “That’s where the other guardian must have come from.” 

“So if you see another well-preserved corpse, don’t touch it!” Pekorin told everyone with a laugh. “As for you, well,” Pekorin said to me, “I guess congratulations are in order. You have cheated death and now you’re up the creek in the Demonic Realm!” She put two thumbs up. 

“It must have been pretty dire straits,” said Mallow, “if your only option was a tomb in the middle of old Draugavellion. But it was still very cleanly done,” he raised his cup of wine. “I can’t get a whiff of spiritual scarring from here, it’s like you were never even dead. Even priests of Luĉia have trouble with that.” 

“It wasn’t on purpose on my part,” I said. “I was brought here by falling down a bottomless pit... I should probably mention I’m not from this world.” 

“Well, I guess we did assume you weren’t from _here_ ,” Chaco said, “but it sounds a bit like you’re not talking about the Mortal Realm either? Are you from somewhere else in the Innrinêma? I’m not really good at cosmology…” 

I was about to say _Earth_ , but what came out of my mouth was a deep nonsense syllable that gave me goosebumps. 

“What the peko was that?!” Pekorin said, standing up and wary. The others had also leaned away and looked spooked. 

“I… I was about to say the name of my home world. It came out wrong. That’s not the name!” I wheezed out the last with desperation. 

Mallow was looking at me intensely, his eyes wide open with fascination. “That sounded a bit like the secret hymns of the cult of Fûaketta of Many Guises. It is said that hearing them can drive one mad.” 

“A cult of the White Fox?” Chaco asked. “What does that have to do with this?” 

_Fox?_ I thought. “I was led to the pit by a white fox,” I said. 

Cascabel slammed his fist into his palm. “Now it makes sense!” 

Mallow gave him a playful backhand slap on the shoulder. “You’re just saying that to feel included. But yes,” he nodded, “that makes some sense.” 

“My world,” I started slowly, mouthing each word carefully just in case they twisted, “has no magic or miracles like I’ve seen here. So when I saw a random fox in the middle of the city, I followed it. Then I took a step into the darkness and fell down into a pit and… It’s difficult to remember now, but there was a place of waiting..? Then I fell again and here I am.” 

“That settles it, case closed!” Pekorin clapped her hands as if to dust them off. “No need to figure things out deeper, we are not poking the eldritch and unsettling origins of Mister God-Touched here, everyone clear? This is getting too peko for me.” 

Everyone agreed, including the wizard, though reluctantly. 

Pekorin nodded to me. “I’m not going to be asking for any of your preternatural epithets that man was not meant to know, spooky corpse pilgrim,” she crossed her arms, “but we need to call you something. ‘Guardian’ will do as your cognomen, and in honor of _my_ discovery of your resting place, your first name will be Heri!” 

“It’s not a competition, Pekorin,” Chaco said. 

But what a coincidence. “Oh, that’s actually pretty close to my real first name,” I said happily. 

“... Oh peko.” she turned to Mallow. “Do you think that’s some sort of omen?” 

Mellow gave her the ‘how the peko should I know?’-look and Chaco started laughing so hard she started crying. 

I raised my cup, and hoped that no one saw it shaking a bit. “ _Heri Guardian_ , at your service,” I said and drained it. 

======================== 

After getting the introductions out of the way, the meeting quickly dispersed as Pekorin’s lieutenants unsteadily but confidently joined the party in the other room, and left me with the slightly less drunk Pekorin and Chaco. I guess it had been just a quick meet and greet. 

“Besides all of that before,” Pekorin dismissed the previous revelations with a hand wave, “what are we going to do with you?” She stroked her nonexistent beard. 

“Don’t worry,” Chaco looked at Pekorin sideways, “you did help us a lot with the nekrothral situation before so we do kinda owe you.” 

“Hey, don’t give away free negotiation pekositions!” Pekorin glared at Chaco. She tried to give me a tough look, which in practice was just a dorky squint. “If _we_ hadn’t been here, you’d be in deep peko. So let’s call that a wash.” 

I raised my palms. “I am grateful for your presence, yeah. Wouldn’t want to wake up in nightmare land without anyone else to suffer together with me. Although I didn’t realize I had been that helpful with whatever nekrothral is.” 

“Oh, you helped a little, when _we both_ dropped the nâtaur in the river.” She really emphasized ‘we both’. “I mean the big peko made out of ghost jerky. Mostly my doing, of course, but I have to admit your presence was useful though you didn’t technically _help_ in an active sense of the meaning...” 

“Didn’t you say the corrupted guardian was destro–ACK what the hell?!” Chaco said as Pekorin elbowed her in the guts. 

“Y’know what, forget it, I want to show you something,” Pekorin dodged a punch from Chaco. 

=========================== 

We ended up passing through the maze, taking passages that led upwards and inwards in a shrinking circle until it became obvious we were ascending the big central tower of the mausoleum. 

“Why does everything have to be such a _maze_?” I complained. 

Chaco raised her lantern to illuminate the spiral staircase. “We’ve seen a lot of these kinds of things on the way here, I think it was a local ritual method to confuse ghosts and spirits.” 

“That worked marv–” / “Ha, that work–” I and Pekorin both synchronized. 

“Stop!” said Chaco. “No excessive sardonarcasm. It probably _works_! It’s just the situation outside,” she waved at the tiny window outside towards the day-lit sky that was now a light pink in color, “is what it is.” 

I got to finally see a lot more of that pink sky as we reached the top of the tower. Contrary to what I thought earlier when I could only see through a couple of small windows, it wasn’t actually twilight, because the sun was _burning_ above us. The feeling of its rays on my skin was disconcertingly hot, even though the air itself wasn’t that warm. I didn’t dare glance up towards it, because it _felt angry_. 

Pekorin walked up to the parapet on the other side of the staircase entrance and beckoned me to come look over it. In the opposite direction from her I could see down to the plains and the great lake, now a reddish gray under the day sky, while to the sides were sheer cliffs that stretched all the way to the horizon on both sides. We were on top of that cliff-face. 

But what Pekorin wanted to show me was a city. 

“That,” she pointed at the wasteland ruins some distance upriver from us on the same plateau on top of the cliffs, “was called Ravenser, we’re pretty sure. The river was called Odd, and this was the bottle-neck port of an ancient empire that tried to run away and escape the end of the world. It might not look like much, but once upon a time it was prosperous, and the lands beyond it were rich as well.” 

“I,” she pointed a thumb at herself, “am the captain of a chartered adventure company. My job is to take this bunch of lovable misfits,” she pointed down at the temple where her minions were, “go out into the unknown,” she spread her hands out towards the horizon, “brave certain death at the hands of the ancient undead enemies of the gods,” shadow boxing, “and get _filthy_ rich,” she let invisible coins fall down through the fingers of her cupped palms. 

“‘Officially’,” Chaco cut in, “we are reclaiming this world for the gods and mortalkind. Or at least scouting out for trouble so that nothing can easily slip through into Yfritalam.” The Mortal Realm. 

“But really, it’s all about wealth and power,” Pekorin said. “Most of the gods don’t even want to remember this old pit. Usually there are just mortals like us, who toil and explore and find nice little things like gold, artifacts, art, magic, and other stuff that we can sell back home. Away from here are whole areas – like the one around Ys-Carcosa – that have been tamed. There’s nothing much there for your ordinary adventurer because everything's gnawed down to the bone with nothing left and venturing too far is too dangerous. But sometimes a new path opens,” she points towards the lake and and a river snaking away, “and there is a new opportunity for an industrious and virtuous adventure company captain to dig up some treasure.” 

I looked out at the ruins. “Are you really sure you can find anything good here?” I asked. 

But Pekorin snorted with a smug look on her face. “Oh, my good new friend. The situation has changed a bit,” she grabbed me by my forearm, “because I found something even better.” 

Fires of greed and hubris burned in her eyes. “Oh?” I said and tried to catch Chaco’s eyes, but she also was smiling. 

“Together with you,” Pekorin pulled me closer and whispered conspiratorially, “I can take this city and create a new Carcosa. If we can take this city for the living, it can become the kernel of _an_ _empire_.” 

“...What? Why me?” I said and she let me go. 

“You,” she tapped at my chest plate, tuntuntuntunTUN, “your body is that of a Guardian of this city. You have some sort of _connection_ to its soul and the unfortunate spirits that inhabit it, corrupted or not. And don’t think I didn’t see what happened, Heri,” she used my new name with a silky whisper, “when you touched that thing down in the temple sanctuary. It was gone, like that.” 

“That doesn’t just happen, Guardian,” Chaco said excitedly. “The nekrothrals are anathema to the _gods_ and their mortal hatred allows them to terrify the heavens. Generally that kind of thing is _pret-ty_ hard to dislodge from somewhere. Normally you need a lot more firepower and patience to conquer territory in Nedhrigard,” Demonic Realm, ”and a lot more than that to actually keep it. Not the kind of thing a mere adventure company can usually bring deep into the plains of Draugavellion.” 

“But _you_ did it with a kiss and goodbye,” Pekorin’s smile was wide and mad. “The corrupted guardian went after you and then melted away like... spirit butter or whatever. I could feel it.” 

“And as the final locus of the nekrothrals in this temple, it took most of their strength with it,” Chaco finished and wiggled her fingers goodbye. 

I blinked. “Ok. So. You want me to go into that city and get asphyxiated by every other grudge-revenant there so that their souls get purified in order for _you_ to take over as the mayor of a crapsack necropolis?” 

“Yes!” Pekorin nodded cheerfully. 

“No!” 

======================= 

Then the company took me back with them into the Mortal Realm where I started working as a chartered accountant for a textile trader in Ys-Tartessa. I died a natural death at eighty seven in bed surrounded by three children and a baker’s dozen of grandchildren who all cried a lot. 

As if. Pekorin hanged from my back all the way down to the camp, whining all the way. 

“Please, please, please, please, please, please, pleaaaaaase,” she kept going on and on and **_on_**. 

“FINE!” I shouted at her and she immediately dropped down. 

“I knew you were a sensible man. Now let’s get drunk!” 

“That reminds me of how I was recruited,” Mallow said and took a swig. 

“I thought I was the only one!” Cascabel said next to him. 

Of course I didn’t actually feel like I had much choice, even if I did refuse. The Wild Hare Company was there, and they wanted me, and what else was there I could do? This way they’d help me more and teach me how to survive. 

(And only a tiny bit of my reasoning was tinged with the unreality of the situation. If my life had become a comedic fantasy adventure, then this was the right way to go.) 

“But I’m not going out there,” I waved my hand, “trussed up and served as a sexy treat. You need to teach me how to stay alive, you need to have my back, you need to give me time to cope and…” I took a deep breath. “You need to give me some exposition.” 

“Of course we’ll do that!” Pekorin smacked me on the back of my armor and handed me a cup. “We’ll make a mighty warrior out of you in no time!” 

====================== 

“My people have a word, ‘ _peko’,_ ” Pekorin said, as she mournfully looked out over the red lake beneath us. “It means the feeling after a great defeat when you’ve pre-emptively declared victory.” 

“It hasn’t even been a god-damn day, you ass!” I half-shouted hoarsely from my position on the dry ground, my breathing almost turning into dry heaving. 

Most of the rest of the company, about twenty people, were down at the lake loading stuff from the company’s ship, a small galley that had earlier that morning been beached on the shore. It was a small distance away from the waterfall and by the remnants of huts and buildings that remained of a once-great harbor town whose name no one knew. In ancient times the cliffs had been cut through with huge stairs that lead straight up to the plateau, but I’d also seen the remnants of elevator shafts that had used water power. 

She sighed and dropped down next to me. “I guess so. But you really are terrible at this.” 

We two were outside on the temple island trying to figure out what the baseline of my abilities were. Turned out that I didn’t have any fighting skills. At least my new body was strong and sturdy, and doing all the flashy magic spirit things the others did when fighting probably wasn’t going to be an issue for me either, apparently. Later Chaco had promised to go through spear-fighting with me, and I knew a couple of the crew were actually diving in the lake to try to find my spear. 

I actually missed my armor, because I was definitely going to bruise in some place, no matter how small Pekorin was compared to my new body. Taking the armor off had been a bit of a puzzle to figure out at first, but we got there eventually. Just like the other things in my coffin, it was pristine – or had been before my little adventure. Even the leather was supple and the clothes underneath smelled only slightly of synthetic pickle, though it seemed to get worse as I sweated during Pekorin’s tutoring. 

Pekorin pulled out a small rectangular box of hardened leather with oil-paper lining that flipped open from the top, and pulled out a pencil-thin carrot. “ _Morë_?” she offered the box. 

I tapped one out and looked at it. Yeah, that’s definitely a very small cylindrical carrot. “In my world these were called…” I stopped as I felt the stirring of the nonsense. “Nevermind.” I took a nibble. 

“Hey, don’t swallow it yet!” Pekorin said. “Chew it a bit and leave it for a while. After a couple of minutes you can swallow it and take another bite.” 

It was definitely a carrot, but I did as I was told. Yeah, _definitely_ just a bit of chewed carrot. 

“I’m not getting it,” I said, and finally swallowed. 

Pekorin also took a new bite. “Well, it’s an acquired taste.” 

She continued after a moment, the carrot poking out of her lips. “We have to figure out more about you, if this is going to work. Just for medical reasons we need at least to know, hm, what race you are, I guess, affinities, spiritual stuff… That’s usually taken care of when you’re still a kid.” 

“Race?” I said. “Do you mean species or ethnicity or what?” 

“Species,” she swept a gesture over her body. “You’re definitely not a pîka. We can tell.” 

“No ears,” I nodded. 

“No taste,” she agreed. 

“And I guess I’m not what Chaco is either?” I asked dryly. 

“Not a porclin, yeah,” she smiled at my joke. 

“Are there any other species in the Wild Hares other than, uh… Well, human?” The ‘human’ rolled off the tongue easily enough. “In my world, we only had one kind of human.” 

“Oh peko,” it wasn’t a swear that time, “This explaining stuff is hard. I don’t know much I should assume you already know.” 

“I’ll tell you to dial it down if need be.” 

“Ok, so there’s about four lineages of mortalkind we have to care about. The first and greatest are the pîkurnar, my race, beautiful, mysterious, all-knowing and powerful, enigmas that walk the earth in the guise of mere mortals…” 

“Shut up,” I tried to kick her lazily as we sat on the ground. 

“And you’re obviously not a porclin, like we deduced, and probably not a dragon, auka or phoenix. If you feel like pecking seeds on the ground, tell me and we’ll figure something out. So that’s three lineages.” 

“So the fourth is… what, humans or humanoids?” 

“If you want to be _crude_ about it, yeah.” Pekorin looked around us to see if anyone was nearby. “Ok, this is going to be some _deep cut_ cosmology, but yeah. Elves, cambions, ogres, beast people? Different kinds of humans. Don’t tell anyone I said that, it’s just going to end up with a lot of peko bickering. But I, Pekorin Leveret, am an anointed Antedeacon of the fourth level of mysteries of the Pîknarâdh, so I should know! Also don’t tell anyone I told you my cult rank, but you need to know that I am a pretty big deal.” 

“... So how did humans end up as elves or ogres?” 

“Oh, that’s fifth level stuff,” she dismissed my question and stood up to (almost) loom over me and get a better look. “That body is at least from the Third Age, probably much older, and Nedhrigard was a world of cambions and ogres besides baseline humans. And porclins, of course. So most probably one of the two devil-kin races or just a big peko-off human.” 

“... is… is that bad?” 

“Oh, don’t worry, humans are perfectly acceptable people some of the time,” she patted me on the shoulder. 

_I guess that answers that question_ , I thought. 

Pekorin reached up to my temples and started massaging the area around where my hairline was with her thumbs. 

“I think I can feel nubs where the horns would pop out,” she explained. “We’ll have to ask Sarc about it.” 

“Sarc is ‘devil-kin’?” 

“A lapsed ogre, that’s where he got that splash of blue in his hair,” Pekorin explained. “Open up your mouth,” and I dutifully did. 

“Hmmm,” she said thoughtfully. “I have no idea what I’m looking at.” 

I snapped my jaws shut. “I’m getting that impression.” 

“You’ve got sharp teeth at the hrond here hyere I’h hointing, right,” she pointed at her own teeth where she didn’t actually have proper canines. I quickly confirmed it myself, and though they were a bit sharp they seemed pretty normal. 

“Well, I’m probably not a vampire, at least,” I joked. 

“Your world had vampires?” Pekorin asked and took a bite of carrot. 

“Just stories, like the other races. I assumed they existed because the little translating magic in my head,” I pointed at it, “supplied a word for it.” _Draugas_ in Vanalig, as in _Drauga_ vellion. 

“ _Teeechnically_ ,” Pekorin said nasally and raised her finger, “vampires are not a species, but a… Uh, a _peko_ that happens. I think it’s some kind of divine blessing that got out of hand?” 

I looked around at the withered landscape. “Is that usual with gods?” 

“They try,” she said. “No one is perfect... er, except of course Pekôra the Most Magnificent and Kind (blesséd are they who are blessed by Her). I guess the rest are pretty ok too.” 

Then she crouched down and threw herself into three long backflips that ended in a painfully _cool_ backwards slide and a ready fighting stance. 

“Now, break’s over, let’s peko some learning into you!” 

=============== 

A few days later I camped with Pekorin, Mallow and a few of the crew down by the lake-town instead of up in the temple. Pekorin’s and Mallow’s explanation for why I needed to be out of the safety of the building and the river-moat on top of the waterfall boiled down to “we want to know how you handle a nekrothral.” Without my armor. 

I was less than enthused. 

Turned out that wine is only a sometimes-drink in the Wild Hare Company; the tea kettle was boiling on an actual campfire we set up in the old town. It was burning with extremely weathered pieces of old timber that had become exposed where buildings had collapsed. 

“So what are the nekrothrals really?” I decided to ask. We were sitting around the fire, and my voice was getting a little better over time, but I was pretty sure I’d be stuck with a pretty rough voice in the future regardless. I had become fixated on it because it was the thing I noticed the most about my new body, every time I spoke. 

“Straight to the point! I like it!” Pekorin pointed finger guns at me that she turned towards Mallow. “So, what are they?” 

“I’m pretty sure you know as much as I do, captain,” Mallow smirked and shook his head. “Maybe more. Well, I guess we could start from the very beginning. What we know is basically mythology anyhow.” 

“At least you have someone to ask about it,” I said. Apparently there were quite a lot of nigh-immortal beings and creatures out there. 

“Nekrothral as a thing might be as old as time, before the creation of the Aegir and the apotheosis of Toginn Sôla. They are mortal souls, like yours and mine, only _infected_ by hatred. Some say that hatred came from the outside, from souls or spirits that gathered in our worlds on purpose to cause havoc, others say that mortal souls carry the capacity for hatred within them naturally. In any case their connection as worshippers of the gods gave them the power to hurt them, like a poison hidden within prayers; they became ‘anathema’, as it goes, and when that happens it’s almost impossible to turn back anymore; they are committed. Embodiments of the sunken cost fallacy paid in suffering on a cosmic level. Or at least that was the pet-theory of my mentor at the College” 

“They are a thing the gods actually fear,” Pekorin said, “even though I think the gods could easily splat them down if they got over that fear.” 

“Some more than others,” Mallow said. “It is said that Toginn Sôla herself holds no fear for them.” He pointed at the sky. “That’s why even in the Demonic Realm, the nekrothral do not thrive in the sun.” 

“I _thought_ it felt angry,” I said. 

“Oh, official Solaic dogma is that Sôla does not get angry,” Pekorin bared her teeth. “I'm certain the second part of that has to be ‘she gets even’; no one can be that serene, not even a god. Don’t get me started.” 

“As for nekrothrals in mortal history, trouble started already in the First Age. One of the few verifiable things we know of history in the Second Age is that there were huge waves of migration to Yfritalam from here and by the end of it Nedhrigard was near collapse and the inhabitants became refugees.” 

“That’s why the gods of the Third Age are such heroic figures, peko,” Pekorin puffed up her chest, “mostly thanks to Pekôra the Most Beautiful and Wise. The forms of their velâdhal were created to stem the tide and prevent the collapse of the other worlds.” 

“If you ask anyone but a pîka,” Mallow interjected with a laugh, “then Luĉia, Queen of the Dead is the one who stemmed the spread of nekrothral everywhere except here.” 

That tickled a vague memory in my brain, but I wisely (as always) decided to let it go. 

“You seemed to be handling them pretty well, I thought,” I said instead. 

“Well, we’re not gods so we don’t have any special weakness towards them, they’re just monsters,” Pekorin said and rose up to take the tea pot off the fire. “But even though we can kind of push back and fight them, purifying is another matter entirely.” 

“You have to perform rituals afterwards,” Mallow clarified, “to seal the souls away. We use small jars for that.” 

“When we return to Yfritalam,” said Pekorin, “we return the pots to whatever temple is convenient and get blessed by the gods.” 

“Is that how you grow stronger as adventurers? Blessings from the gods?” 

“Of course. But these babies are the real deal too, peko,” she showed off her biceps. 

“If we had a priest with us, or a necromancer, we could do the purification at the site of a fight,” Mallow said, “but that invites attention from far away, like most divine things. You’d have to have good defenses to house a temple in Nedhrigard.” 

I was about to ask a follow-up question when we were interrupted. 

“Captain, something stirs in the shadows,” one of the crew appeared in the light of the fire and suddenly I noticed that the sun had set and we were quite deep in the night already; the sky was that malevolent dark red again. 

“Thank you, Flathon,” she said to the cat-eared adventurer. Apparently he also had cat eyes, because I couldn’t see much of anything out of the ordinary. No wait, I was an idiot and just blinded by the campfire. 

“Suddenly I am much less comfortable with this,” I said and picked up the spear I had on loan. 

“Don’t worry, I have your peko,” Pekorin said and absent-mindedly patted the sheats of her twin daggers. Mallow stood up too, but he was supposed to just observe the effect I would have on the ghosts. 

“I will want it back, I’m still using it,” I muttered under my breath and walked into the darkness. 

My eyes quickly adjusted for the darkness, which didn’t help _that_ much with the creep-factor of the place. I got goosebumps and could almost hear something, and both sensations were totally just in my head and I was psyching myself out needlessly. 

I really, really hated jump scares. Then again I really hated slow-burn too. In fact, I hated horror in general. 

I really missed my armor. 

“AH FU–” I twitched as something moved in the darkness! Correction, nothing moved in the darkness, it was my own shadow. 

I was a big man, I could handle it. Actually, I was an even _bigger_ man now, come to think of it. I was a _gigantic_ humanoid who wanted his mom really badly right then. 

Suddenly it was really quiet. 

“Pekorin, is it just me or did it get really… Pekorin?” 

She was gone, she was _gone_ and I was _alone_ in the spooky ruins and it was suddenly getting chilly and I couldn’t see the light of the camp-fire and I could feel a thousand eyes on me. 

I took a deep halting breath and shook. _Calm down, you were able to do the thing just a couple hours ago_ , I thought to myself. 

So I did the thing and clenched the spiritual fire in my abdomen and let it spread through my limbs and into the spear. 

The power sputtered, but held. The pathways of its travel were well-established – thank you, previous occupant – and even though Mallow and Pekorin had told me my fire was, quote, “weird”, it had been judged pretty potent for a newcomer. So at least I wouldn’t have to beat up ghosts with just my bare fists, because I could kind of make those fists glow a bit. 

It was tiring to keep up, though. 

I noticed that my surroundings had become unrecognisable and I didn’t know where I was, and then I knew then that I was under the influence of the stalking spirits. I would have to break through by force, or let them ambush me and fight them back. 

_I mean, I mean, I have to learn how to get out of a binding like this at some point, right?!_ I explained to myself and ran like hell trying to find an exit. 

Of course I didn’t get anywhere and started going in circles. The shadows flickered around me and everywhere I went was just unsettlingly similar enough to where I had already been for it to bother me. 

Then the whispers started. The usual scary ghost murmurs, ‘flesh’, ‘blood’, ‘join’, ‘hate’, you know the kind I’m talking about, we’ve all been there. 

“Shut up! Shut up!” I shouted at them angrily and ran into a dead end alleyway. 

_Oh noo_ , I thought. The whispers were gone now, but I felt the hair on my back rise and I _knew_ if I turned there would be something there. 

_I hate this, I hate this, I hate this_. 

I steeled myself. I had to turn around. 

And there it was, a small girl child. 

So I punted her away with a running kick I hadn’t even realized I had started and a scream that came out of a deep place in my soul. 

All hell broke loose and the familiar screeching of the ghosts that I’d experienced in the maze roared around me and I ran. 

Something caught my foot and I fell in the sand. I swung the spear and kicked my feet at the skeletal arm holding me as the ground around me shook and shivered to reveal awkwardly bent corpses. My spear sliced bone and I was able to rise up on my feet, but I had nowhere to go as the streets around me disappeared and turned into a closed courtyard. 

I started hitting the crawling corpses, my spear lighting up with short flashes and at least I was able to detach bone from bone and make them feel it. I burned the flame of my spirit with a brighter flame, as exhausting as it was, and hit grasping hands with my fists and kicked at dusty spectres, until one of them caught me by the neck and I was flat lying on the ground with them crawling over me. 

A hundred phantasmal clawing nails pierced me as they raked at me, and my throat constricted painfully under bony hands, and I couldn’t scream– 

Orange light blinded me with a streak that reached from my stomach to my face and I had to quickly close my eyes and spit away the dust in my mouth as the dry corpse disintegrated. One, two, three, four more implosions of dust and piercing creaks as Pekorin’s daggers punctured through space and I was free again. 

“You ok there?” she asked as I opened up my teary eyes, and bent over me to get a better look. 

“I want to go home,” I rasped. “I hate this.” 

“I’m sure it’ll be easier tomorrow, champ,” she patted my stomach patronizingly. 

“To _morrow?_ ” I whispered, horrified and shivering from the phantom damage to my spirit mantle. 

“Oh, definitely. Same place, same time, same participants,” she grabbed some sand and threw it away as a cloud of dust, “slightly angrier nekrothrals,” she grinned mirthlessly. “Did’ya really think any of these good spectres got purified? Nope, and we won’t be seal-jarring them either, so, y’know,” she rose up, “better get good at dealing with them.” 

“You **absolute** –!!” 


	3. ABC-song

_Q, R, S, T, U and V… Double-U, X... Y and Z… Now I know my ABCs, lotta help that’s now to me…_

Apparently humming out loud songs from my childhood was somehow “unearthly”, “sinister” and “an abomination”, yet I could not get the stupid song out of my head as I repeatedly drew new glyphs into the wax tablet. 

I was back in preschool, oh boy. 

Sarcastic rhymes aside, with the help of the translator in my head learning a new alphabet was easy peasy. For a terrifying moment I’d thought I had to learn a logographic system, like Chinese, but thankfully no; though my first impression had been of a big load of new letters the idea itself was basically the same. 

Besides the obvious gaps and a different inventory of sounds, there were two major differences between what I knew and the Tartessan script: the first was that most of the plosive consonants had a set of different symbols where each variant glyph had an internal vowel association. If you wanted to write <tu>, you had to write the symbol TU _and_ the vowel letter U after it. It was a little like the difference between the letters C, K and Q in the Latin alphabet, except for a lot more consonants. The second wasn’t as big, but much more annoying, because instead of using spaces or punctuation to separate words, each symbol had a version of it that appeared only at the start of words, almost like capital letters. It was a whole writing system that used CamelCase. 

Later we were supposed to do the Carcosan script, which was apparently related to Tartessan writing, even though it looked completely different because it was written vertically in long flowing lines while Tartessan looked similar to the blocky letters of Latin or Greek instead. 

Oh, and apparently Ys-Tartessa and Ys-Carcosa were twin cities with two divergent languages and writing systems. I hadn’t yet asked how that had turned out to be the case, just to spare my dwindling reserves of brain. 

My studies occurred with Mallow in an office in the temple that we’d found earlier. Mainly we were using it because it had large windows out towards the south that let in light. 

The past week the Wild Hare Company had been combing through the mausoleum for valuables, and there had been a lot, but mainly in the form of artifacts and other things that would end up as pieces in someone’s collection or a museum somewhere. The shrine in the cave with the pool hadn’t had anything that could be picked up easily, but the rest of the complex was surprisingly big, with a lot of space dug into the cliff-side. 

I was told that these mausoleum temples were more like fortresses, but instead of being purely for physical military defense they existed on the spiritual front against the nekrothral. It was a system used in the Second Age in Draugavellion and other places on the continent, where you took a great and willing warrior and put them in a box to guard against the encroaching end, both physically and metaphysically. 

“Out in the former countryside you get barrow mounds with maybe one shabby guardian,” Mallow had explained earlier, “but the towns and cities have big temples like this. Based on what we can see of Ravenser, there’s a bunch of big buildings inside the city walls that could well be guardian temples, and outside in the suburbs and old slums there are three others like this in the other cardinal directions. Bigger ones, because the nekrothral here spread from the east.” 

One of Mallow’s jobs, besides being a wizard, was cartography. There weren’t any good maps of the ancient lands of the Demonic Realm available, so adventure companies and some very brave lone adventurers got their pay by making maps. 

Unfortunately, doing any kind of proper triangulation would take much too long and be too dangerous, so most maps relied on expert guesswork and sometimes someone was crazy enough to use the frankly insane concept of inter-dimensional seismic stamping. 

In one corner of Mallow’s office stood five red barrels that I actively had to not think about so that I wouldn’t drive myself crazy, because they contained high yield magic explosives. 

The theory went like this: the space and time of the two worlds didn’t align 1-to-1 except very locally, like the surfaces of two pieces of crumpled grid paper that only touched by accident. If you knew the magic geomantic signature of a location in one world you could maybe identify its matching coordinates in the other when you found the place they aligned. It was tricky and subtle work that took a lot of time and a lot of walking around and if the alignment was sufficiently off you maybe never found it at all because you’d been searching hundreds of miles in the wrong direction. 

Inter-dimensional stamping was basically a method to imbue some very specific mixtures (“flavors”) of explosives with an arbitrary magic signature and then make a big boom that dented the membrane between the worlds a bit. Then if you were quick enough, you could travel to the other world through some other location, listen for the echoes in the magical space-time continuum and that way triangulate your way to where the alignment was located. 

To simplify the logistics Mallow’s apprentices were currently travelling in three separate groups in the Mortal Realm where they could quickly pinpoint down the trace of breadcrumbs of explosions the Wild Hares left them. If Mallow’s estimates weren’t too wrong, the apprentices were currently somewhere in the mountains of Dûn. 

“Stop worrying about the explosive barrels, they need a lot to set them off,” Mallow caught me staring at them. 

“I noticed something,” I said, “at my coffin. Why were you guys making a big magic circle with a couple of those inside it?” 

Mallow’s eyes bounced between me and the door, but then he gave up on escaping. “Er, listen before you judge. It seemed like a good idea at the time.” 

“Are you serious?” ‘Good idea at the time’. What a phrase! 

“We got caught, and the options were quite limited. The two tomb halls of the guardians were obviously the spiritual centers for the haunt, so if we prayed really hard at the barrels and then exploded them in a very specific place where we knew there would be a locus…” Mallow gestured down at the ground. 

“I was in there!” 

“That was kind of the point, yes. But I assure you, if we had known you were alive and uncorrupted in there we would (probably) have reconsidered it, at least a bit. But it was a pretty sticky situation. It was super lucky that you woke up and acted as, uh.” 

“You’re welcome,” Mr. Bait said. I said that. It was me, I was Mr. Bait. Who acted as bait for the ghosts. 

I put down the wax tablet and got up to stretch myself and look over Mallow’s work. He was drawing two rough draft copies of a map of the surrounding area based on the written and drawn descriptions of the scouts. Apparently Captain Pekorin took pride in that everyone in the company knew how to read and write, and that applied to me too. 

“The city is completely blank,” I said, “is it dangerous to get too close?” 

“We’re being very careful,” Mallow said. “The nekrothrals are in a kind of hibernation. You can’t stay awake and alert for centuries straight. This mausoleum is a bit too close for comfort for me, personally, but it’s very defensible with the waterfall forking around the island.” 

“If we poke around, will the whole city get alerted?” 

“Usually not, unless there’s a local hierarchy and something like a nâtaur lord.” He looked up from the map. “When I say it like that, it seems a bit more concerning. But that’s the risk of the job. We haven’t worked in Draugavellion before, no one really has, and I didn’t expect the guardians to be… a problem. But I’m sure the scouts and Captain Pekorin are well on top of things.” 

_Stop, you are so jinxing it,_ I plead inside my head _No wait, am I jinxing this? If I acknowledge the jinx, do I give it power? Is my genre-savvy dooming us? How many levels deep can this go?_ “Sure thing,” I said aloud instead and got back to my letters. 

* * *

I figured out I was being given some kind of apprenticeship circuit when Pekorin handed me over to the scouts and Bori Earp, the human man with a face that could have been the before-picture in an ad for ulcer medicine. 

“I’m taking you with me and Flathon over the lake to check out a fork in the river that we passed on the way here. We can figure out how well you _walk_ some other time,” he told me. 

For this, we were taking a small boat. It had a small sail, but we’d most probably be rowing out and then hope to use the sail during the evenings and nights. 

“I’ll have you know, I am not much of a sailor,” I said as I looked at the small boat. 

“Well, you know at least how to swim in armor,” Earp said and gestured to me to come and push the boat off the sand bank. I wasn’t wearing most of the plate for a trip like this, just a cuirass, vambraces on my arms and greaves on my legs. 

“Does your world even have the concept of a…” I tried to translate the words ‘life jacket’ in my head, but by the way I could only come up with halting new compound phrases instead of a naturally flowing word meant that there probably weren’t. “Nevermind, you don’t.” 

It didn’t take much to get the boat in the water and I was able to hop in quickly enough not to get myself wet, while cat-eared Wastel Flathon and Earp didn’t seem to care that much. The water of the lake was beautiful and clear even though the color it reflected in the sky was pink, and I could see fish and other water critters all the way down to the bottom silt. Towards the waterfall the bottom was actually deeper and rocky, but you couldn’t see it because of the churning waters. 

We set off rowing over the lake, taking turns at it while one person rested. It wasn’t a very big lake, but down at the water level you couldn’t actually see the other shore that you could just about glimpse if you were on top of the cliffs. The angry sun of the supposedly gentle god Sôla (which is what everyone except Pekorin seemed to say was obviously the case) was burning in the light red sky and I was thankful for the brim of the hat we had been able to scrounge up in my new head size. 

Also for the fortieth time that day I thanked whatever deity had picked my new body. It even came with prepared calluses! Or maybe it was just naturally hardy in a way that an Earthican one wasn’t, magical internal powers were involved after all. Suffice to say, we did very well with our speed. 

That thankfulness had faded a bit when my muscles were burning with hellfire by the time we were all the way to the other shore. I had been informed it had taken us a mere three hours, but it felt like an extremely _long_ three hours. 

“Just a little bit more and then we can let the river do the work for a while,” Earp consoled me with a grin as he sat at the back of the boat resting. 

“I am a few centuries out of _shape_ ,” I said, puffing out the last word on our pull, and Earp and Flathon both laughed. 

“I’ll tell Chaco you need to be working on some proper hauling when her turn comes,” Earp said. 

“Speaking of that, what’s the deal? I thought Captain Leveret just wanted me for my exorcism mojo. I mean, I do appreciate the chance to do anything else other than getting my ass kicked by ever more angry wights.” 

“A fine strapping abomination of creation like you is officer material!” Flathon laughed behind my back between pulls. 

“You’re being groomed to be actually useful,” Earp explained and pulled out his canteen and took a swig. “You are obviously educated, you have special skills others don’t have, we just need to figure out what you’re good for. For what it’s worth, your fighting skills are getting good enough to keep you alive at least.” 

“If I had to go through what the Captain puts you through every night,” Flathon said behind me and Earp snorted at the phrasing, “I would be a man long gone. Either running for the hills or dead from all of that ghost-touch rending,” he made a sound of shivering. He was referring to the cold spiritual damage the ghostly nekrothrals did with their clawing touch. 

“We’re now arriving in the river mouth, boys,” Earp said and I could feel myself relax. 

The river’s flow wasn’t particularly speedy, but we weren’t in a terrible hurry anyhow. It was nice spending a relaxing afternoon floating down the river as one of us rowed. I could let myself not think about things and just look at the banks of the river go by and sometimes spot signs of actual life. 

“Is the whole of Nedhrigard like this, or are we just in a wasteland?” I asked after a while. I had spotted a group of terrifying cat-sized griffins that looked like gothy bearded vultures, with the red-ringed yellow eyes and all that. 

“Mostly, yes,” Earp said. It was Flathons turn to row. “It’s not _all_ dead, but it’s a lot worse than in the Mortal Realm. Enough for small groups, like adventurers, to forage, and if you can somehow get rid of the local nekrothrals you can revive the soil, like around Carcosa. Of course water is a separate matter, as you’ve seen.” 

“The sea here doesn’t screw around, though!” Flathon interjected. 

“Yeah, we’re lucky that we don’t have to go out to sea in Nedhrigard. The rivers and lakes are great, but the seas are perilous and full of monsters. No wonder all sailors are mad, may Mariraun Hâsȷôr carouse herself blind and miss my passage.” 

“Listen to that, Guardian,” Flathon said, “like he wasn’t a sailor himself!” 

“Shut up and row, pastry boy!” 

* * *

The other branch of the river fork that we were supposed to explore was much smaller than the main branch we came along. It came in from the north, but we didn’t know whether it came down from the eastern cliffs like Odd or just the northern foothills. 

We didn’t follow it far, because as the evening crept closer there came a wind that Earp decided was safe enough to use for training me to sail. 

I remembered that on Earth, the terminology of sailing and ships was a jargon of cute terms with very specific meanings and impenetrable origins, and the stuff Earp was telling me did not translate to it at all, maybe because I didn’t know it in my previous life either. Happily, the terms he did use were simple and easy to understand; compounds and analogies that made sense and thus do not have to be explained or written down here or mentioned in any way at all for the rest of this account, ever. 

Besides, I just sat there as the two were shuffling around in the small boat with a few ropes and the triangular sail while yelling out instructions and explanations. Which was for the best, really. And as a plus there wasn’t that long vertical pole that seemed like such a head-hazard on the sailing boats I remembered. 

To get most of the evening wind Earp set Flathon on the tiller and continued into the night. Fortunately it didn’t really seem to become that dark, for whatever reason, and even though Earp complained about the visibility I could see fine. 

Eventually we camped and spent the night on a hill with good visibility around us, but without a campfire. The hill actually had a lone tree on it, which apparently was a good sign regarding nearby nekrothral activity. 

We went to sleep after setting up a circular ward on top of the hill, and I got the guard duty in the middle, but the others would spend time overlapping with mine to point out basic tricks. Earp seemed impressed by how well I could spot things in the dark, even though I had little experience at it, and taught me basic constellations to keep track of the time. 

When I woke up Flathon, I had been feeling a bit spooked for a while. 

“I’m scaring myself,” I told him. 

“Well, let’s do some basic sensing.” 

He told me some basic breathing exercises to get them out of the way and we played a kind of ESP test game where he hid a pebble in one of his hands and channelled magic into it and into nothing in his other hand. 

After I got the hang of it, he had me close my eyes and do something similar to all my surroundings. 

Of course I couldn’t feel anything beyond a white noise. 

“Can’t sense anything sensible,” I told Flathon. 

“There might just not be anything,” he admitted. “I can’t sense anything, either. Pick a direction and point at it, maybe there’s an interesting bush or something.” 

So I did, and of course there was nothing there when I opened my eyes, just a vague direction upriver. 

“See, nothing there, like I said–” I turned to Flathon who was looking in that direction with wide eyes and a rictus on his face. 

My heart seized for a moment before the damned cat-man’s face turned into a mocking grin that my fist almost imprinted in his dental record, but alas, I missed. 

* * *

Early the next day we arrived at the ruins of a village where Earp decided we would stay for a while and then turn back. And by ‘stay’ I mean we would check out the local barrow for loot. 

The rest of the village had been weathered away quite thoroughly, and the barrow was just a big brown hill. Thankfully we wouldn’t have to dig too much, because the inside was basically a hollow vault built out of large stones and the top of the entrance was only just visible. 

“The spade,” Earp grunted as he pushed it into the earth, “is the second most important tool an enterprising adventurer needs.” 

“What’s the most important one?” I flicked away dirt from the hole we were digging at the entrance. 

“Good boots.” 

Funny, last time the answer had been ‘a good hat’. 

“It’s been bothering me,” Wastel said from the campfire where he was cooking some fish we caught earlier, “but this village is peaceful. Too peaceful.” His cat ears twitched 

Earp gave him an exasperated look, but straightened up and looked wary nonetheless. I let go of the spade and went to pick up my spear. Earp fidgeted with his sword. 

A minute passed in tense silence. 

“Oh, I guess there’s nothing then!” Wastel barked out with a laugh. 

Earp caught the look I was giving him. “Just old superstitions, old rituals,” he said with a sigh. 

“... Got it,” I said. I decided to seal away certain phrases, like ‘ _what could go wrong_ ’ and ‘ _the plan is foolproof_ ’. The world was starting to give me a headache that was orthogonal to the other headaches I had. 

A bit deeper into the dig we confirmed that the doorway to the barrow was blocked by a big slab, but after we removed the dirt out of the way it was reasonably easy to pull down out of its frame with rope. 

“Newbies first,” Earp gestured to me with the lantern he was holding, and so I held my spear ready as I crouched down to walk through the passageway leading inside. 

It had to be said, the construction work on the countryside was not quite up to the standards of the monuments of the city. The large rocks that formed the walls and the ceiling were decorated with stonework and writing, but it lacked a certain polish. The symbology was very similar, though, and by the time I entered the burial chamber itself I was convinced I was in the resting spot of another guardian. 

“So-so,” Earp opined as he stood up beside me, “but I really appreciate the head space. If this was just for a normal burial somewhere else, we’d have to dig everything up and remove a lot of rocks.” 

“The coffin is open,” I croaked out. 

Suddenly Earp had pulled out his sword and held the lantern up in the air to light up the whole chamber – and there in the corner was a cobweb-strewn mummified corpse, sitting down cross-legged against the wall and holding a helmet. 

“Poor bastard must have awoken,” Bori stared at the corpse and calmed down. “I guess that’s a downside to their system.” 

We approached the corpse slowly in case it decided to do something, but nothing happened. 

They had taken off their armor at some point, and the rest of the equipment was inside the stone coffin – which was in great condition, with the items inside much better preserved than the stuff left outside of it. 

“Do you think this helmet will fit you?” Earp held up the helmet the corpse had been holding and I shook my head. The dead guardian had been much smaller than me. There weren’t big enough spare helmets in the company for me, either, and I really started to feel the need for one. 

I was rummaging through the coffin when Bori shouted out loud with a startled cry. 

“What?!” I turned quickly and he pointed at the wall even as he looked away with a grimace. 

“Can you read that? I can’t even _look_ at it, it’s freaking me out.” 

The guardian, stuck in what had eventually become a real tomb, had scratched on the walls a few twisted marks that gave me chills. 

“It’s all pleads for ‘help’ and ‘where am I?’” I explained to Bori in a quiet voice. I picked up a piece of broken rock and scratched away at them to erase their otherworldly presence. 

“ _Poor_ bastard,” Bori hissed again with emphasis. 

After a few seconds I steeled myself to continue. We found some valuables that went into a sack, and the armor and weapons in another. 

“You take this, though,” Bori handed me a curved sword. “Let’s see how compatible another guardian’s stuff is for you.” 

Some experimentation we had done when my spear had been finally found in the water seemed to indicate the weapons and armor I had were specially keyed to me, or maybe to whatever knightly guardian mummy order the previous occupant had belonged to. The things that the corrupted guardian had were not on the table for any kind of testing. 

I hesitated a bit before finally taking it. I was now a grave robbing, tomb raiding, temple burgling adventurer, and I had to get used to the idea. 

“Is everything alright in there!” Flathon shouted from the entrance. 

“We are fine!” Earp answered. 

“Nothing has attacked us so far! That is so weird!” 

Earp looked at me and then turned towards the corpse of the guardian and the writing on the wall. 

“Don’t look at me, I don’t have anything witty to say to that,” I told him. 

Bori swore. 

* * *

After that, Bori decided to hurry up back home. 

We loaded up the boat with whatever we found and followed the current down with two rowers. The wind was slightly against us, but that didn’t slow us down by much with the sails furled. 

“Oh thank the gods,” Wastel said as he shielded his eyes looking to the western bank, “something is stalking us, finally. I was getting worried.” 

“You have to be sarcastic, right?” I said and pulled on the oars. “Please say that you’re not serious. I can’t tell.” 

“Hey,” Flathon looked at me and one of his cat ears twitched, “if you can’t see the enemy it just means you have really sneaky enemies!” 

“They say it’s bad luck not to get into trouble on an expedition like this,” Bori explained to me. “What is it that you see, though?” he asked Wastel. 

“Some kind of beast, not a nâtaur. About the size of a lion. Not a holy beast.” 

“As long as it doesn’t swim, we should be ok. Get out your bow, just in case.” 

“Are you allowed to say that?” I had to ask. “I mean, doesn’t that basically guarantee it’s now going to be able to swim?” 

Wastel pointed at me. “See?!” he shouted with excitement. “Even the new guy knows it! You love tempting fate, Bori!” 

“Shut up and get the stupid bow out!” 

Eventually we saw our stalker close enough to make out what it was, just in time to also spot four more of the same. 

“Is this real?” I muttered to myself. 

They were wingless griffins, like the smaller ones we’d spotted before, except these were big and their body shape was a little more bear-like, rather than feline. They were black and white in coloration, with black backs and heads and a white stomach and neck, and a fading red collar in that white around the neck; their eyes disappeared into the black around them and it seemed like they had no eyes. They also had big and long black beaks, which did not seem comical at all. 

“River emperors!” Bori cursed. “Row, and pray the wind will rise before they decide to attack!” 

We were being stalked by manhunter penguins. 

When we were coming closer to the river fork the wind started to pick up and Bori and Wastel worked around me hoisting the sail up while I rowed like our butts were on the line. The alkë, another name for the penguin griffins, didn’t seem to understand what we were doing, but they did notice when we picked up speed and shot towards the main branch. 

Wastel took potshots at them, but the riverbank was far enough away that he couldn’t get a hit. When we finally entered the main river and started moving east towards the lake, they abandoned the western side and dove into the water, disappearing under the surface. 

I swore. “Where are they?!” I gripped the oars tighter and tried to get back into the rhythm with Bori. 

“They will have to resurface, they need to breathe,” Wastel stared at the water with squinting eyes as the sun blinded us with its glare. 

I rowed as Wastel kept guard and Bori tried to desperately handle the tiller and the sails as we zig-zagged our way up the river. The silence was punctuated with the alkës surfacing and spraying water out of nostrils situated high up on their foreheads at the very end of their beaks and Wastel swearing at every missed shot. 

I missed the sounds when it suddenly became deadly quiet. Bori’s hand on the tiller gripped hard and he unsheathed his curved sword just as the boat shook as something crashed against the bottom. 

I let go of my oars when a screeching river emperor suddenly appeared on the deck hanging over the side and snapped at me and caught my leg by the calf, and I felt the greave actually flex a bit under the force of its toothed bite. 

It tried to pull me into the water and I screamed, but Bori struck it in the neck with his sword and it let go and dropped back into the water with a screech that belonged on a dying horse-manticore. 

“Are you alright?!” Bori shouted but was interrupted as another beast jumped out of the water and got its webbed claws on the deck and, to its surprise, got shot in the breast by Wastel’s arrow. 

It screamed horribly and started thrashing, setting the boat shaking as it hit its legs against the water, and the others answered its scream. 

“Just die!” Bori screamed and plunged his sword down with a two handed underhand grip into the beast’s back and ended its life. “Row, man!” he shouted to me as I _was about to_ , damn it, and I scrambled to my seat and grabbed the oars that thankfully hadn’t disappeared yet. 

The river emperor’s screamed at us as they surfaced, but with one of theirs dead and another wounded they kept it at just that, while our deck was slick with water and blood from the dead alkë. Wastel took his shots and once seemed to hit one of them, and that seemed to be enough and they turned away from us and left. 

I didn’t stop rowing, though, and Bori returned to the tiller as Wastel kept the guard. 

After a few minutes after the alkës retreated, Wastel breathed in and let out a relieved sigh. “Those were some nasty birds.” 

“Territorial as hell and dumb as rocks,” Bori said. “They grow them big here, nothing like that back home.” 

“Well,” Wastel pushed the carcass of the alkë with his boot, “is there any good eating in this?” 

“They taste like crap,” Bori muttered. Then he brightened up. “At least we’re getting some victory wine with it!” 

“Toast to the survivors!” 

I just rowed. 


	4. Passageway

My spear swung through the specter and left in its passing nothing but a streak of weak light and the dust that the ghost had stolen for its form. This was routine now and my form of fighting was a mockery of martial arts that I practiced against the intangible and the dead in the dark of the night. 

In a strange way, I had grown to know the nekrothrals of the port town down by the lake. Well, as much as I could when all they still possessed of any personality was expressed through horror, and so I knew there still was one left somewhere, lurking the shadows. The corpse-wights had been taken care of earlier, now there was just one ghost left. 

I breathed out and closed my eyes and tried to use my Jedi-senses. It didn’t work most of the time, but practice makes padawan. I cracked myself up sometimes and it was starting to worry me. 

So of course I didn’t sense anything when the specter pounced at my back and tried to desperately enter my core. 

My body tightened up with a horrible, sudden chill and it felt like a giant hand had clenched around my innards and squeezed ever so slightly, and then the feeling was gone. I only half-noticed that I had fallen to my knees as Pekorin was suddenly beside me, appearing from wherever the peko she always hid herself during these ‘training sessions’, and she grabbed me and hauled me up to my feet with a jubilant yell. 

“You did it, peko!” she said, a bit more calmly, “I don’t know exactly _what_ happened there, but it’s gone.” 

“Oh, that’s nice,” I croaked out. “I need to sit down, though,” and I did. 

While Pekorin patted my back and praised herself as a teacher, which I ignored, Mallow ran up to us with excitement. “So you finally did something, boy!” he coughed out and breathed in. “The scrying caught some very interesting data in the sand, it really was a completely new kind of signature I haven’t seen before.” 

“The trouble is…” my teeth chattered once but settled down, “I don’t know what happened. The ghost just… Went in and disappeared.” 

“Don’t worry about that,” Pekorin said, “A profit of a thousand dragmas starts with a single flan. Just take what you felt just then, remember it, weaponize it and _peko_ , you’re going to punch some ghosts into oblivion in no time.” 

“Externalize my pain and inflict it upon others, got it,” I coughed. 

Even as I said that I recalled what had happened. You see, I had learned a skill called “actually paying attention to this spiritual magic mumbo jumbo stuff happening inside of me” and used it, so what Pekorin said… wasn’t wrong. One step at a time. Or as she said, one small gold coin used for regular daily shopping. The influx of dragon gold in the Fourth Age had apparently caused quite a bit of inflation. 

“Oh, did you feel that?” Pekorin said. “They’re agitated.” 

“I really want to imprint the signatures right away,” Mallow grimaced, “but it shouldn’t take longer than fifteen minutes to check all the wards keeping them in. We still have so much work to do.” 

I sat on the sand, tired and silent as they fussed about. The muted red-tinted stars of the night sky told the time, which was too late at night to care for anything anymore, and the psychic reflux of the nekrothral’s parting feelings emerged from the jumble of my recall, tasting of apostasy and bile. 

* * *

“So, how are you settling in?” Chaco sat down by me around the runic stove as I ate up the stew of the day, which had still some of the gamey monster penguin I’d fought with Earp and Flathon. 

She brought up her own bowl and took a deep sniff with her cute piglet snout, and I wondered if she had an instinct to just dig in. 

“Disturbingly well,” I replied and put down my bowl. “Either I have overestimated the human capacity to survive, or I have been changed.” Well, I knew it had been the result of my long incarnation. I just didn’t want to say it aloud. 

“Then I won’t worry about it,” Chaco laughed. “I have my hands full with the Captain in any case. How are your numbers?” 

I closed my eyes in pain. “I wish I could tell you of the mathematics of my world. If I could, I would take your numeral system and choke it into _submission_ with extreme pleasure. _Why?_ Why does such an abomination exist? There are better ways, Chaco! Beautiful, elegant ways! Oh, if only you could be shown!” At some point I had stood up and started gesticulating in agitation. “You would _love_ its simplicity and beauty.” 

She had her hands on her ears. “You’re leaking the madness stuff, Heri,” she said dryly. 

I cursed. It wasn’t my fault some stupid god or whatever had decided to muzzle me when I _manifested_ stuff. Apparently talking about or praying to the gods too much when you were in Nedhrigard was not advised so I couldn’t even ask about them too much. 

“One day I will bring true mathematics on this blighted land,” I told her. “You will not have to memorize multiplication tables with three and a half hundred entries and it won’t involve unnecessary addition. The numbers will be all regular and similar every step of the way instead of jumping between two bases. I didn’t even use to know what a ‘reciprocal table’ was! We had such beautiful _methods_ and I spurned them without even knowing how I would miss them. I was a fool.” 

“So, your studies are going badly?” Chaco asked 

“No, but it’s really, really annoying,” I said and sat down to get back to my stew. 

In the end it was just numbers that were slightly weird, it was just that I wasn’t going to do any long division without invoking Nyarlathotep’s cousin any time soon. Or at least that was what everyone seemed to think. 

“Just persevere and think of the logistics, Heri,” she intoned regally. “One day _you_ might be the one with the tally slate instead of a hauler!” 

It hadn’t been _raucous_ fun unloading stuff from the boats and moving it up onto the cliff-side and ferrying it over the waterfall onto the island, but it hadn’t been terrible either. Simple, mindless work while you gossiped about nothing with your coworkers for an afternoon. 

“I’ve had worse jobs,” I just said. 

“Well, it’s about to get a lot more interesting, at least!” she laughed and kind of looked around to see if anyone was eavesdropping. “We’re moving in on Ravenser soon.” Not that she quieted down or anything. 

_Oh drat_ , I thought. 

“Oh _drat_ ,” I said. 

“We actually found a tunnel into the undercity from here,” continued. “Sarc scouted it out today, all the way up to when it forked somewhere outside the city walls, but you bet it’s going to lead to the other mausoleums and the city.” 

“And Pekorin took it as a sign?” I groaned. 

“It’s like you’ve known her all your life,” she shook her head and waved to someone behind me in greeting. 

“Oh, that’s easy, all I have to do is think ‘what would that megalomaniac do?’ and the question answers itself. Don’t worry, I know, I know.” Chaco had been trying to signal me and I turned in my seat towards Captain Pekorin. “Oh my goodness, Captain. You scared me, I had no idea you were there.” 

“I am stealth incarnate herself, peko,” she gave me a dry look. “It seems you already know, through some uncanny otherworldly intuition I’m sure, that you’re coming with us.” 

“By the rice husk’s whiskers,” _whatever that meant_ , I’d heard someone say it before, “what an unseen development.” I am not too proud to admit that I maybe sighed a bit. Maybe pouted too. 

“Anyhow, prepare everything you need for tomorrow because, by peko,” Pekorin revealed a sadistic smile that I knew she would deny she had, “you’re getting a crash course in leistic adventuring.” 

* * *

The entrance to the tunnel was in the very middle of the maze, in a horrifying three-dimensional core section that was genuinely brain-hurting in its twists and turns. The part of the maze I had scrambled through on the first night was just the outer layer, mostly set up as floors with some stairs, but the area protecting the tunnel entrance seemed to think up and down were cardinal directions just as much as north and south; this meant cramped passages and a stupid amount of ladders up and down and up again. 

Mallow was drawing a magic circuit thing all around the exit room in the center with glowing chalk. “The Draugavellians were a _fascinating_ people,” he said. “I can kind of understand the workings of the spirit-trap here, so my circuit will be just providing reinforcement.” 

“Chaco really was right,” I said to Pekorin. “Traversing this puzzle was hard enough without being cursed on top of it, can’t imagine what it’d be like for a stupid ghost.” 

“Let’s hope it works well,” she said and held up her lantern. At the same time she put away her pack of morë root sticks and dropped the pendant she’d been worrying over inside her armor: a gnarled and dry-looking small orange root that was shaped like a stick figure, apparently the symbol of her race’s patron god, Pekôra. “Everyone ready?” 

The group going on this adventure was small: Pekorin, me, Sarc and the three armored archers who had been with him, the human siblings Erest and his younger sister Andra and the snow elf Kirẏa Custandamo. Later there would be a rotating guard in the room while we were away. 

Everyone was armored, at least in breast armor and greaves for Pekorin and most of a full set for the others, and I myself had a strapped on kettle helmet with a brim that Chaco had hammered into a slightly bigger shape. I had my guardian spear and the sword from the barrow, which was still a bit unfamiliar but perfectly functional and I hadn’t been cursed or anything because of it so hey, a free sword. The rest wore daggers and a bigger side-arm; a round-headed mace for Sarc, swords for the siblings and a warhammer for the elf. A realistically sized warhammer, with a head not that much bigger than a carpenter’s hammer, and definitely not a sledge hammer. No, hammers _that_ big weren’t for war, those were for ‘monster cracking’, I’d been told. 

“Does anyone have any wool for my ears, in case Sarc needs to shoot that thing?” I asked, half-jokingly. I mean, I _hoped_ we wouldn’t need to shoot the hand-cannon inside the tight passageway. 

I was a bit dismayed when he grinned and pulled out a wad of some kind of gummy substance from the buckled bag on his belt. 

“Gunner’s gum,” he handed me a bit. “I’ll tell you if you need to use it.” 

“... Thanks,” I said. 

After fumbling with my own bag, I looked up and saw everyone looking at me. 

“What?” 

“Newcomers first,” Pekorin bowed and waved her hand with a twirl towards the entrance. Everyone else seemed to enjoy the moment. Bastards. 

“Fine, fine,” I prepared myself. Thankfully I’d received some underwear so I didn’t need to ‘gird my loins’ like some of the others did. “Into the breach,” I muttered, the otherworldly quotation only slightly weird on the edges, and with my spear bravely pointing forward I stepped inside with a two-handed grip and twenty pounds of regret. 

Nothing happened, and I continued before the others could start to heckle me forward. 

“Nerio’s mace,” Sarc whispered, “he’s still alive!” sarcastically. 

“Shut up, you smartasses,” I shouted at everyone laughing at my back. “This is hard!” 

That actually broke the tension for me, so I continued onward and the others followed. The tunnel was only wide enough for two people to pass each other sideways, so everyone just followed in a file with me in the front and Pekorin behind me, holding a lantern on a pole that she poked in front of me. 

“Good luck!” Mallow shouted behind us, still drawing the circuit. 

After a while of moving forward, Pekorin spoke quietly. “Just take it easy, this bit has been already scouted out. Besides, there are no traps here. Not the local style.” 

“I mean, what would a nekrothral care about a trap?” I asked. 

“This is why I pay you the big dragmas,” Pekorin said and I snorted. Technically I did have a salary, but apparently it wasn’t too great because I hadn’t known the local adventuring market’s wages and couldn’t haggle… 

I dismissed my musings about whether I was a wage-slave and we walked deeper into the passage. 

* * *

The passage quickly stopped looking like the people who made it cared about its looks and became just a roughly dug rock tunnel. Every now and then there was a side-passage that eventually would lead to a small room with long-decayed remnants of provisions and vertical shafts up to the surface, about a foot wide and surrounded by magical sigils. 

“Why are the air shafts out of the way like this?” Pekorin wondered. 

“We think it’s the river,” Sarc answered. “The side-rooms are far enough to clear the water. The tunnel itself runs underneath the river.” 

Me and Pekorin both looked in the direction of the central tunnel. “Do you think there’s some kind… flood traps?” I finally asked. 

“Didn’t see any kind of peko for that,” Pekorin answered. “Then again, all you need is to open up one valve anywhere upriver from here and the tunnel would fill up,” she slapped her hands together, “like that.” 

“You seem cheerful,” I noted sourly. 

“I finally get to use my trap-finding skills! I was starting to think the Draugavellians didn’t know how to make them. To be honest, it was kind of worrying me. Felt wrong.” 

“If you want we can dig a hole somewhere and put some spikes in it for you,” I said. 

“No, thank you, the thought is kind but it wouldn’t be the same,” she shook her head. 

* * *

In half an hour we arrived in a small circular room dug into the rock that had three paths forking in other directions. 

“The middle one is obviously the city,” Sarc pointed at a rough engraving of the writing of Draugavellion and the only word I recognised in it, ‘Ravenser’. 

“The only thing I can think of in the other directions,” Pekorin said, “are of course the other mausoleums. Let’s take care of the small stuff first, so… Left?” 

“Just for the record, the waterfall temple was also ‘small stuff’.” Sarc said to me. 

“The other two are smaller,” Pekorin retorted, “and the waterfall was probably just an anomaly, it’ll be _fine_.” 

“You’re the boss, Captain. See,” Sarc turned to me, “this is a vital part of an adventurer’s skill set: assigning authority and blame,” he laughed as he dodged Pekorin’s fist. 

We took the left path immediately after that, with me in the newbie spot once again. As we moved away from the river towards the north, the air shafts started providing spots of light from above us, though not enough for us to extinguish the lanterns in the stretches of pitch black darkness between them. 

Eventually the walls started seeing some polish again. The path into the mausoleum mirrored the one in the waterfall mausoleum, and we entered a small square room at the center of a maze that was similar as well. 

As I stood there looking for signs of the ghosts I actually found them. The atmosphere in the room took a cold tone I had become too familiar with, and the light of the lantern flickered on the walls in shadows that were about 25% more unsettling than usual, give or take 5%. So when one of them quickly rose up from the floor I was ready for it and poked it with my spear, already preheated with a magic glow, and scattered its ashes. 

Then the god-damned howling began (always with the _howling_ ) and the walls oozed with ghosts reaching in at us. 

To prevent attacks from below Pekorin had explained to me several methods, including stuff like the magic circuits that Mallow and many of the others of the crew could do, but a quick and easy fix she now applied was to make her hands glow and kneel down and slap the floor with them so that all the ghosts in it got punched out of the material to the other side for a while, probably to get disoriented by the maze’s metaphysics. I’ll admit it looked kind of cool, especially with the flash of light from the floor highlighting the edges and carvings. 

“Just beat them down!” Pekorin shouted, and we complied. 

Doing some ghost-busting was so much easier as a coordinated group it wasn’t even funny. The ghosts didn’t even stand a chance of doing _anything_. 

“No wonder you’re so overconfident and foolhardy,” I said the first moment we knew there weren’t any more in the room, “that was suspiciously easy.” 

Pekorin thumped herself on her breastplate. “Of course it was! In the Wild Hare Adventuring Company (based out of Ys-Tartessa) we’re good at what we do, and what we do... is being _great_ at what we do.” 

“Boss,” Sarc wiped a nonexistent tear from his eye and then dabbed it with the left fork of his blue beard, “you’re making me almost feel proud.” 

“Where’s the pack with the ghost jars?” Pekorin looked around at everyone and then reached over her own shoulder to take off the small backpack. “Anyhow, I’m thinking of making that our official motto when we return.” 

“It’s a bit of a mouthful,” I said as she took out a clay jar the size and shape of a mandarin orange and ripped off the paper lid. 

“We’ll only use the first part,” she put the jar on the floor, which I could see now was half-filled with a waxy substance and a wick. “Fire, fire… Anyhow, and then, when we have to do a group pose or there’s a climactic scene where we all arrive to save a colleague from our enemies or whatever and things are dramatic, that’s when we say the second part out loud and phwaaa, thanks,” she took the wooden stick Andra had lit from the lantern, “the audience will go nuts…” Pekorin concentrated on lighting the ghost jar. 

I was getting tired of being the straight man. But someone had to do it. 

“Sarc,” I pointed at him, “your turn to be the straight man.” 

He saluted with solemnity. Good man. “Captain, you’ve been watching too much street theater!” 

“Your family is too much street theater,” she muttered as the wick refused to lit, until it did with an eerily bright blue flame. “There we go!” 

* * *

We marked our way through the three-dimensional maze easily, dispatching lost ghosts caught in labyrinth as they came along and leaving a couple of lit ghost jars on the way to collect the ectoplasm (or whatever, I hadn’t asked) that we’d have to pick up on the way back. 

“You’re doing well,” Pekorin told me while we were taking a break just before the exit from the maze core. “Just keep an eye out after this, I’m starting to feel it.” 

Captain Pekorin’s famous intuition. Well, the rest of the company still seemed to trust it, so I just nodded. 

The outside of the maze core was more familiar ground, the same kinds of twisting passages that we used at the waterfall mausoleum, with the same kind of engravings. Thankfully we didn’t have to take any more ladders, so all in all it was an improvement. 

However, I was a bit worried that we weren’t being attacked by much of anything. I could feel the presence of nekrothral around us, but only singular stragglers would actually materialize and attack us. 

“You have got stupidly good sense for a newbie,” Pekorin told me as I voiced my concerns and the others chuckled. “There’s definitely something going on. I’m not sure it’s another guardian. At least it doesn’t have the same kind of grip as the one that trapped us, it’s letting wraiths go needlessly.” 

She looked at me up and down and pondered for a moment. 

“Yeah, let’s go back for today,” she finally said. “We’re just scouting anyhow.” 

I nodded in thanks. You’re the best, Captain Pekorin. 

We turned around and returned to the maze the way we’d come, picking up the ghost jar on the way, and suddenly the cold of the nekrothral was stronger and meaner. 

“I can smell you now,” Pekorin muttered behind me and I could hear the smirk on her stupid, foolhardy, harebrained devil-may-care face. She _knew_ , she _knew_ , damn her. 

The marks we had left behind us were gone or scuffed, but we hadn’t gone too far and could still remember the path. I tried to listen for any noise, but beyond the susurrations of my own ears and the noises of the party, nothing really stood out, until I realised there was actually a whisper that was getting louder. 

Suddenly the hallway drummed with a soft but loud thrumming and the dust shook around us into clouds, darkening everything around our circle of lantern light. A screech from ahead alerted me, but nothing came from the direction as the creature that was suddenly behind us struck and hit one of our lanterns from Erest’s grasp, making him shout behind me. 

I turned back towards the nâtaur, the amalgamated monster like the one we had fought at the cliff. In the darkness I couldn’t see properly, but it seemed smaller and lying lower to the ground. 

That didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous, and I would have moved to fight it if Pekorin hadn’t shouted to me. 

“Keep your guard out in the other direction!” She had already drawn her daggers and ran up to the nâtaur, and I followed her command and turned away from it to see whether the screech had been just a feint or actually something up ahead of us. 

If I hadn’t, the claws – one feet long and spiralling like overlong human nails – would have stabbed me in the part of my neck just where it met the skull and was only covered by the brim of my helmet. 

I yelled out a mighty warrior’s cry, a very high pitched one that warbled into incoherence, swiped my spear and pushed aside the extending arm with the shaft. The nâtaur snarled and grasped the metal shaft, ignoring the blue ring of tiny flames burning its hand, and pulled me towards it. 

Nâtaurs are generally ugly, in a dead mummy sort of way; all teeth and no nose, created out of too many bones in too little flesh. The first nâtaur at the waterfall had had some of the vitality of a living – or near-living – body to give it some fullness and Gigerian beauty, but I suspected most other nâtaurs were more like the lopsided and chimerized Ötzis we faced then. The one I faced had four arms. 

“Aah!” I shouted and pulled out the curved sword I’d borrowed from the barrow and tried to bring it forward, only starting to empower it with my inner fire, but the nâtaur grabbed my arms and held to my side, and bit down on my shoulder armor with its excessive teeth. 

I could feel them actually push in and start to puncture the metal, and tried to kick it away, but it just pushed my kicks away with its spare arms. The only thing I could move was my own head and so I did the only logical thing and took a bite of the creature’s neck that mirrored its own. 

It was like biting into a dusty and crumbling leather purse someone had stuffed with live rats and now those rats were panicking and boiling as I _felt_ – 

The monster pushed me away with a screech and I fell on the floor, my weapons clanging down with me. 

“You alright?” Andra stepped to stand between me and the monster, her sword steady and lantern in the other hand. The others were fighting the other nâtaur. Erest was lying on the ground but he was trying to get up so I didn’t worry about him too much and turned back to Andra. 

“It tastes bad,” I had to let her know. “Don’t eat it.” 

“... All right.” 

The four-armed nâtaur was writhing and hissing at us in a crouch, the flesh where I’d bit ragged and black with nothingness, like a hole into deep space that was leaking firmament. It feinted an attack at Andra, who parried it, and it didn’t push further so I got up from the floor and spit. 

I quickly sheathed my sword and picked up my spear, empowering it once again. Then I looked at the monster, which stilled and raised itself up. 

“I’mma bite it again,” my words slurred a bit. Huh, did I hit my head? Well, in any case I took a step forward. 

The nâtaur took a step backward. 

I waited. Then took a step forward. 

The nâtaur took a step backward. 

I started running, the nâtaur started running, Andra started running, we all started running and everyone was shouting different things. 

Almost immediately the nâtaur turned and struck at my face with its claws, but I was able to stop and poke at it with my spear instead, and Andra was able to run to its back so that it was now hemmed in between us in the halway. 

We both twitched in surprise as the blasted hand-cannon exploded around the corner from us. It didn’t puncture my ear drums so I just ignored the ringing and waved my spear at the nâtaur. 

“You’re supposed to be the new anti-nâtaur guy, right?” she shouted at me and took a swing at the nâtaur, which dodged towards me again. “Do the thing!” 

“ _You_ do the thing!” I retreated a few steps as the nâtaur screamed and leaped at me. 

“I can’t do the thing!” she tried to stab the nâtaur which just concentrated on me. 

“What a coincidence, neither can I do the thing!” the nâtaur finally reached me and the arm I _hadn’t_ seen raked across my cheek and forehead, and I screamed. 

Thankfully it didn’t get my eye but the blood blinded me on the left anyhow, and of course the pain (which I heroically ignored) didn’t help at all. The nâtaur struck at my right side, but the armor held and all it did was a few shallow punctures and _oh god actually, that might have been my ribcage_ , but Andra chopped down on it and cut off it’s upper right arm which deflated like a punctured bag of flour as it flew off. 

I noticed her attack didn’t have the same kind of effect as my bite. You know, the void into nothingness kind of thing. 

It turned snarling at her and she was too close to dodge its punch and fell to the ground. The nâtaur pounced on her only for the sword she held to punch through its stomach and light up like a torch with Andra’s inner fire. 

As the nâtaur trashed slashing at her armor she yelled at me: “Thing! Do thing!” 

So I did my best effort at it and stabbed it with my spear and held it there, sending and grasping through it to find the sensation of a cold spirit mantle. 

Reader, I finally did the thing, on purpose. 

I wrested at the creature’s misshapen spirit-stew, a great amalgamation of many small dried up souls that had curled up on themselves like tiny ouroboroses that fed on their own excreted hatred. In that collection there had to be thousands of them, and I pulled at them like a maelstrom and pushed them through my own spirit mantle where they touched another world and disappeared like a spider in the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner. 

_The shop-vac is a little ol’ place where we can get together, shop-vac, behaybee…_

I had to have a concussion or something. The sudden chill and shuddering was all because of the exorcism, though. 

I came alert still standing upright to the sound of sputtering and coughing as Andra tried to breathe out the mummy dust the nâtaur had left behind as the magic dissipated. She was covered in brittle bones and dust and pieces of mummified flesh. 

“You alright?” I asked her and held out my shaking arm. She took it and I pulled her up, and she immediately unbuckled her helmet and started spewing against the wall. 

I felt weak, but not as weak as I had the other two times I had done the thing. It might have been because I did it on purpose, or through the spear. In any case the others were still fighting the bigger nâtaur somewhere else in the passageways, because I could hear them. 

“L-let’s go,” my teeth chattered still as I spoke to Andra and it seemed like she had hacked out everything that was an acute problem and only her nose was leaking with dust-black snot. She nodded back and picked up the sturdy lantern that was still somehow lit. 

“Wait, we need to stem the bleeding,” Andra pulled out a small clay bottle from her pouch. “Hold still while I pour on some potion.” 

Neat, magical healing potions. “Sure,” I said, and kneeled down by the wall and braced myself. 

Holding the bottle by the cork with her teeth she first unstoppered her waterskin and washed away much of the blood. The wound hurt badly, and stretched from above my left eyebrow down to the check, but thankfully it missed the eye and eyelids in between. 

Then she uncorked the bottle with her teeth and poured liquid fire over my face. 

I screamed and lashed out by reflex, almost hitting Andra as she held my face in place somehow, and then she let go and I was able, only just, to not wipe at the liquid hell-fire burning in the wound. My heart beat stronger than when we’d fought the nâtaur and I felt like throwing up if I hadn’t been screaming my lungs out. 

Then the pain kind of disappeared, leaving only a very sore face behind. 

“What the hell was that?” I croaked out. Magic potion my ass. 

“Wound-closer,” Andra looked at me with indulgence. “It is very effective. Now let’s go,” she picked up her bow and took off. Grumbling along, I followed towards the noise of the other fight. 

When we came across the rest of the party, they had cornered the nâtaur. It was a lot bigger than the other one. If the other one had got the extra arms, this one had all the legs, but it wasn’t as centaur-like as the one on the first night; instead it was a crawler, with ten legs radiating out from its torso like a spider. Well, eight, but only because two of them had been shot off by the cannon, leaving a big gaping hole. 

It had several arrows poking from it, each smoking a bit. Pekorin, Sarc and Kirẏa the snow elf were keeping it penned in as it tried to strike out from its corner while Erest was shooting it with arrows from the side, slowly whittling at it, but appearing unsteady on his feet. 

Unlike the one we’d fought with Andra, this one wasn’t a screecher and kept silent while it looked for a way to escape. 

“Andra, Guardian, I can’t believe you’re alive!” Pekorin showed her trust in us. “Heri, get up here with us and Andra, start pelting it with arrows!” 

“Aye!” Andra answered and went straight to her brother, who looked a bit worse for wear. 

“Captain, I did the thing,” I told her as soon as I was in the circle with the others and pointing my spear at the spider-nâtaur. 

“You did the thing?!” 

“I did the thing.” 

“Can you do the thing again?” 

I still felt a bit chill, but when I had done the thing just now it had been a bit easier on my spirit than before. “I can maybe do the thing.” 

“What in Falaker’s name is the thing?” Kirẏa asked with exasperation and waved their warhammer to threaten the spider’s abortive attempt to move their way. 

“Exorcism!” Sarc explained with much cheer. 

“Heri!” Pekorin jumped up beside me and pointed her daggers towards the nâtaur. “On my count, one, two, three!” I already moved on three when she shouted “Go!” 

Two arrows thudded in the spider’s side when it tried to dodge and Sarc and Kirẏa both stepped in behind us. Pekorin took the opportunity to do one of her theatrical flash-jumps into the air, and to distract the nâtaur from where she would land I jumped forward, too, with the spear leading the way. 

The nâtaur reared, four of its leftover legs undulating in waves when it tried to avoid my stab, and as I’d intended it couldn’t keep an eye out on Pekorin who smashed on its back and drove her daggers in its sides in two of its numerous armpits. “Now!” 

I rushed in and stabbed with the spear where I would have guessed its heart was and found the spirit-mantle again, and this time the chill of the passing spirits was longer and colder. There were many more of them gathered in the creature before me, and when it ended I felt numb and freezing. 

* * *

“Let’s get you warm,” someone said to me and I hadn’t even noticed that I had been led to the wall so I could sit down. A wide-brimmed bottle touched my lips and I drank something warm and sweet. 

“That’s sweet…” I mumbled. Thank god for alchemical thermos flasks. 

“Drink your heart’s fill,” Pekorin said gently. “You’ve earned all the fruit soup you want.” 

I immediately felt better. It wasn’t like the chill was a physical thing, so the physiological reaction would be gone when the spiritual effects lessened. And for that, a good gulp of comforting food seemed to work wonders. 

I took a breath in. I hadn’t been gone for long, or maybe not at all, because the nâtaur’s broken remains were still there just besides us, undisturbed, and everyone was huddled around. Sarc was fussing over her Erest, who was without armor and being dressed with a bandage on his shoulder and his leg, and Kirẏa was drawing a rough magical circle around us with chalk while Andra stood guard with her bow. 

“So how’d I... do?” I asked. My voice was rough again, it seemed to come and go depending on my condition. 

“There’s an old leistic saying: any adventure you return from in one piece is a successful one. Of course that’s all _kinds_ of wrong and only used to comfort those lucky enough to scramble back home from disaster, so I won’t be saying it to you.” 

“Much appreciated.” 

“You did much better than most do,” she patted my shoulder. “If you don’t get better at it, you will probably end up dead some day, but I haven’t met an adventurer who that _doesn’t_ apply to. Except myself, naturally.” 

“Naturally.” 

“These two nâtaur were… below average in difficulty. We could have taken the spiderling down without too much trouble with our group almost any time, but I wanted to wait for you. Sidenote, don’t run off like that.” Her tone got a little bit of steel in it. 

“Sorry.” 

“You’re forgiven only because you’re not dead. But anyhow, cutting down small nâtaur like that isn’t that much work for an experienced group like ours,” she grinned, “but keeping them down after that?” 

She brought something that she had hidden behind her; one of the ghost jars that had been lit, but with a small difference. 

“The flame isn’t blue?” I asked. 

“There is no nearby nekrothralic residue,” Pekorin said excitedly, and took a deep breath. “Can you feel that, in the air? It’s like a weight is gone. The ghost jars aren’t perfect, you have to use them in the same area many, many times, sometimes years, for there to be no residue left to reform. If you leave some of it behind and leave, it’ll all be worse again if you return. Ghost jars are temporary stop gaps and you need to work at it for them to purify an area as well as you just did with,” she snapped her fingers, “a single blessed stab. This is why you are _instrumental_ to taking this place. You don’t smell like divinity to them so you won’t attract them like priests would do, but you can purify them quickly and brutally. We can make it work, you and me, Heri. We can become _kings_.” 

Her whispering had gotten _that_ quality again; the cult-leader fervor, except she seemed to believe it. 

I really was deep in it, wasn’t I? No turning back, or the crazy rabbit will shank me, _maybe_. She had a whole company of people, all probably as crazy as her, and she knew what she wanted: my special ghost mojo. 

“Woohoo,” I said and raised a thumb up. A sting in my side reminded me that I maybe had a wound there. It was all a mess. 

* * *

Looting… Excuse me, exploring the northern mausoleum turned out to be a bust. It’s guardian hadn’t even been part of the nâtaur, which explained why they had been so lackluster. Only a skeleton was left after the magics keeping the body preserved had failed in the past. 

“Did someone get here before us?” Pekorin complained. 

“It’s a much smaller tomb, maybe there wasn’t anything here in the first place?” Sarc suggested. 

“And then probably emptied of anything valuable when the last people fled,” Kirẏa suggested. 

Only the equipment of the guardian in its stone coffin had been left, and those we took because they were still in good shape. No helmet for me, though; I would have to continue with the one I had. 

“At least we don’t have much to haul with us,” I said. Even though I had been bruised in the side, no ribs had cracked and the fresh scars on my face were only tender and not aching, so I had been given the privilege of carrying stuff. 

“Let’s hope the southern mausoleum is better,” Pekorin hoped. 

“Expert foreshadowing, Captain,” I said. 

“Shut up, porter boy.” 


End file.
